Summer bloomers keep giving

up fried egg like flowers of Romneya coulteri will persist from late June until late autumn. The sub shrub Salvias like the dubiously named ‘Hot Lips’ with two tone red and white flowers will bloom unchecked from June until winters onset. Hydrangeas, Potentillias and Hypericum ‘Hidcote’ are also long flowering.

In the herbaceous department the Royal horticultural society proclaimed Geranium ‘Rozanne’ plant of the century with its blue flowers with white centres produced from June to October. Geranium palmatum is another floriferous and more dramatic Geranium with evergreen foliage resembling a ferns and pink/ purple sprays of flowers up to a metre high from May to August. It can be short lived but seeds easily so you’ll never lose this plant.

Another short lived but equally beautiful perennial is Gaura ‘Whirling Butterflies’ producing a profusion of white flowers from June to frosts. Not hardy everywhere and susceptable to wet but well worth replanting every year if lost. Scabiosa ‘Butterfly Blue’ also sold as Scabious ‘Irish perpetual Flowering’ with pale blue flowers June to September commonly called the pincushion flower. Less common than these is Stobilanthes wallichii which is called a perennial but I have seen it growing in Irish conditions and it is more a kin to a sub shrub. Producing a continuous stream of purple/blue flowers from August until the cold stops it.

Other more common yet equally desirable in both beauty and longevity of flower are Rudbeckia ‘Goldsturm’; Verbena ‘Lollipop; Penstemons, Nepeta [catmint], Geums, Japanese Anemones and Anthemis ‘Hollandaise Sauce. There is enough variety here to stock a summer garden without an annual or rose in sight. And if you have a vacant sunny wall or pergola try Solanum jasminoides ‘Album’ for good measure flowering from July untill November.