|
|
|
Plant List |
|
|
|
|
|
Plant List |
|
Now is the glorious summer! Everything in the garden should be bursting with colour and the only problem most gardeners find is a lack of space for all the plants to grow fully if they are too closely planted.
Shrubs and tall perennials compete for space, but are essential for the structure of the garden. A Buddleja bush will attract the bees and butterflies into your garden, while giving wonderful colour and scent and can be cut right back as soon as it has finished flowering early in summer as will the aconitum and delphiniums and foxgloves.The delphiniums often come back in late summer. Buddleja alternifolia has a lovely scent, best grown against a wall to show off the lilac coloured flowers all along its trailing branches.
Roses can be chosen for long flowering season, good scent, disease-resistance, but they do demand a lot from the soil, so remember the extra feeding that will be essential if your other plants are not to suffer. Rosa glauca has lovely dark foliage and stems and red hips in autumn .Rosa moyesii has flowers similar to Bishop of Llandaff dahlia and huge red hips.
I love columbine in so many different colours and forms, but the foliage has to be ruthlessly cut back after flowering. The same applies to forget-me-nots. Hollyhocks and the chimney bellflower in midsummer for height, with a couple of umbellifers like purple fennel, which will last right into autumn.
The delphiniums, columbines and scented lilies, the bearded irises and oriental poppies that open the season, give way gradually to campanula and hollyhocks, the late-flowering clematis, honeysuckle and roses, bergamot -- so many flowers that will flourish in good soil, in a reasonably open, sunny border, that your only problem will be to maybe try to limit the range of colour, to increase the effect. Perhaps a "hot" border of reds and oranges, set off with yellows, or a blue-and-white border,with pale pink, rather than all together. The 'Rambling Rector'is a wonderful rose, with masses of white flowers (and spherical red hips in Autumn) or 'New Dawn', a reliable do-er, good in semi-shade, and a lovely pink.
| Home | Winter | Spring | PLANT LIST | Autumn |