12:09 - 13 September 2010
Colour and drama in the garden doesn’t need to fade as the season wanes. Choose plants with later flowers, interesting seed heads and winter structure for longer seasonal interest
Sometimes, by mid summer the garden can start to loose its colour and vibrancy. Plants that have flowered earlier finish their display and those meant to take over may be short lived or just not as dramatic. A late summer garden doesn’t need to be a disappointment. You can keep your garden looking vibrant and attractive throughout the seasons with some clever planting and versatile plants. There are lots of ways to generate autumn and winter appeal without spending a fortune.
For late summer and autumn colour opt for some stalwarts such as grasses, dahlias, sedums and daisies. Many daisies are late flowerers like echinacea, rudbeckia, asters, helenium, helianthus, heliopsis and even Michaelmas daisies. They have plenty of flowers, look great and the flowers are open with the pollen exposed so they are very insect friendly too. Plants from the daisy family blend naturally with grasses, such as Miscanthus sinensis and quickly create the much-admired ‘Prairie Planting’ style, plus they tend to be low maintenance too. But it’s not just when they are in flower that these plants look interesting. Many of the daisy family (asteracea) also have attractive seed heads, which endure into the winter providing vital food for birds and also fascinating shapes in the winter frosts.
Autumn interest plants don’t need to be anything exotic, there are many garden stalwarts that look good in late summer for weeks on end, enduring into the autumn until the frosts and sometimes beyond. Other great autumn plants include the late flowering sedums. The common variety is ‘Autumn Joy’ but there are some fantastic alternative varieties with coloured foliage such as the rich purple leaved ‘Purple Emperor' and the red and green mottled 'Matrona'. There are also some interesting, low growing varieties such as ‘Ruby Glow’ and also the stonecrops, which are good for bees too. The flowerheads look amazing crusted with frost and linger into the winter creating interest in the border and helping to protect the emerging shoots in spring.
Plant Control
Many gardeners manipulate early flowering plants by giving them what is popularly known as ‘The Chelsea Chop’. It’s a simple technique that involves cutting back some perennials around the time of the Chelsea Flower Show, in mid to late May. The idea is that it encourages a second, later flush of flowers or delays flowering and extends the season. Sometimes just a few stems per plant are pruned back on plants such as for phlox and sedums so that you get a staggered flowering effect, or all the stems may be hard pruned back, this is a useful technique for catmint and lady’s mantle. Try it with a portion of a plant, or if you have several of the same type then experiment, cutting a whole plant back and watching the effect that that has on flowering times.
Dead heading
Plants that have a continuous production of flowers in an effort to make seed include many annuals. These plants can be encouraged to keep on flowering by removing the spent flowers. Plants that this is appropriate for include sweet peas, cosmos, petunias, trailing verbenas, fuchsias and most patio and bedding plants.
Seed Heads
Don’t dismiss the value of using the skeletal nature of dead flowers and seed heads in the garden. In a cottage garden or an informal garden these not only create vital food sources for wildlife but they also fill winter gaps in the border. An upper layer of decaying leaves can also protect vulnerable crowns beneath the surface from a degree or two of cold.
Great plants with interesting seed heads include the Chinese lanterns (physalis), sunflowers, cardoons, alliums, statice (limonium) and angelica.
