Late flowering beauties
THE DOG days of summer may be over and that chill in the morning and evening air may have you thinking of autumn's fiery colours but don't give up on summer just yet. There are plenty of plants that will continue flowering to bridge that gap between the two seasons, and in fact some are only just getting started.
There are many plants in flower at the moment that started a month or more ago and, particularly if we get an Indian Summer, will continue to do so for a while yet. Fuchsia, Hydrangea, Lavatera, Potentilla, Perovskia and some Hebes are all still looking good. Agapanthus, Crocosmia, Dahlia, Verbena, Penstemon, Phygelius, Japanese Anemone and Geranium ‘Rosanne' are worthy of note.
Some roses are treating us to a second show, with the Flower Carpet groundcover series looking nearly as good as in June. Rosa ‘Wiltshire' another pink groundcover rose from the County series I find actually flowers better now than earlier in the year.
While these plants have been flowering for a while others are just starting, they tend to be sun lovers but are not always lacking in hardiness. Abelias would fall into that category. I have grown Abelia x grandiflora for many years and it has never been frost damaged and stays totally evergreen. A medium size shrub of around 2m x 2m, it has an abundance of pink fading to white trumpet shaped flowers over a long period.
Abelia schumannii is slightly more frost tender and slightly smaller at 1.5m x 1.5m that gives a display of lilac pink flowers through late summer to autumn. The hybrid , between grandiflora and schmannii, A. ‘Edward Goucher' is compact with the flowering colours of schmannii and the flowering vigour and hardiness of grandiflora. A great plant for a small garden.
Also for a small or any garden for that matter is the recently bred cultivar A. ‘Kaleidoscope' with bright yellow variegated foliage. New foliage opens lime green/ soft yellow maturing to a bright yellow. In autumn the foliage takes on an orange hue. It claims to flower intermittently all summer but my own only flowers with small white trumpet shape blooms around now and it stays evergreen. At 1m wide by 0.6 m high it can also be grown in a container.
Hibiscus is a flower you may associate with tropical climates and Hula girls with one of the beautiful Hibiscus rosa -sinensis blooms tucked behind her ear. Unfortunately we can't grow that hot climate Hibiscus outside here but there is a hardy variety we can grow.
Hibiscus syriacus requires as much sun and shelter as you can give it to make it flower but it is quite hardy. It is from the East Asia rather than , as the name suggests, the Middle East and it is used to cold winters. Making a shrub of 2m to 2.5 m high its flowers are much smaller than their tropical cousins but are still very showy and slightly exotic. Hibiscus syriacus 'Diana' is a pure white with flowers about 5cms across.
H. ‘Blue Bird' is as the name suggests a strong blue with similar sized flowers. H. ‘Woodbridge' however is a larger flowered variety producing cerise flowers 10cms across, closer to the size produced by the tropical plant. It was found as a chance seedling in a nursery in the U.K and is still a bit of a one off. I have read that Hibiscus can be hard pruned in spring to make a smaller more floriferous plant. This is because it flowers on new wood so the more new wood the more flowers, a bit like pruning a Lavatera which is from the same family. I have never done this but in theory it makes sense.
A charming little plant that is also just begining to flower is Ceratostigma, known as the ‘Hardy Plumbago'. It comes in two similar species, C. griffthii and C. willottianum. Both have bright blue flowers and make bushes of 1m x 1m. Both can take on a lovely red shade in the leaves in autumn even while still flowering. It is hard to say whether these lovely plants are shrubs or herbaceous plants as they can die back to the ground some years, so we'll call them sub-shrubs with a foot in both camps. Provide them with sun and shelter and they will not disappoint.
Indigofera is another Genera of delicate plants that is somewhat in both shrubby and herbaceous
“Many plants are in flower at the moment, and if we get an Indian Summer, will continue to do so for a while yet”
camps in our climate. It provides us with the Indigo herb Indigofera tinctoria, in warmer climates, that gives the dye and colour that is so familiar. Here the lovely species I. amblyantha is the most commonly available here producing shrimp pink pea like flowers on racemes 10cms long on sparsely erect branches. Best hard pruned to the ground in early spring to keep its shape.
Indigofera pendula has weeping rosy-purple flowers that look like miniature Wisteria or Laburnum flowers in shape. Let's try to hold on to summer as long as possible by planting some of these late summer beauties.