Bag an ‘extra-time’ winner
AUTUMN no longer has the “end of term” feeling that a lot of us remember, when we traditionally put the mower away and dug out the paraffin heater for the greenhouse. Today we can all look forward to a long and creative autumn.
Once the school holidays are over, a whole new gardening season stretches ahead to the end of October or even mid-November, so make the most of it now by stocking up on plants that reach their peak in what the footy fraternity would call “extra time”.
One of the most stunning late-flowering shrubs is the cape figwort (phygelius). This semievergreen South African produces large, tiered candelabra-like heads of tubular flowers in loud tropical colours such as deep pink (Devil’s Tears), orange (Salmon Leap) yellow (Moonraker) or carmine red (Coccineus) from now until the end of October.
Even in colder regions you can grow it trained as a wall shrub against a sunny south or west-facing wall. If it does take a hit in a rough winter the worst that usually happens is the tops are killed back close to ground level.
But new shoots appear next spring and flower on cue later the same season. You can’t lose.
Hardy hibiscus (hibiscus syriacus) really does deserve a wider audience. The flowers are the same shape as the flamboyant tropical indoor version and almost as big, except they are not available in red.
You can find several varieties with flowers of lavender blue (Blue Bird), mauve pink (Woodbridge) or white with a red eye (Red Heart). Slow growing and rather upright in shape, they eventually reach maybe 5ft or 6ft in height but only half that in width.
And there is certainly nothing shy about them – they are plastered in flowers from July right through till the end of October.
Another once-unusual exotic that we are seeing a lot more of now is the shrubby salvia grahamii.
It is a slightly frail-looking plant with small leaves and thin stems but from late summer until the first frosts it is smothered in intriguing small red flowers that seem to hover all over it.
It is hardier than it looks but roots easily from cuttings, so take a few as belt and braces to keep indoors through the winter.
You will always find good homes for them.
THE other big stars of late autumn include whiteflowered species of hydrangeas. But forget your typical mopheads; these are very different.
Hydrangea paniculata “Grandiflora” grows 8ft high and almost as wide with great big pointed white conical heads of flower rather like giant icecream cones.
Hydrangea arborescens “Annabelle” is a four-footer, better suited to smaller gardens but still spectacular, with great white globular heads of flower that manage to be delicate.
Grow the two in the same bed with some old faithful autumn perennials such as Michaelmas daisies, sedum spectabile and pink or coppery-red kaffir lily (schizostylis coccinea) in between and you have an autumn border to die for.
Add cape figwort, shrubby salvia and hardy hibiscus if there is room and you will be impressed by the totally new look that the garden takes on at a time it always used to die down. Impact? It’s a real eyeful.