Create a hot border to raise the tempo
Bright yellow, red and orange flowers can’t fail to lift the spirits. Give them a backdrop of dark and sultry foliage
For gardens blessed with a patch of sunshine, create a hot border piled with plants to further raise the temperature. These schemes typically combine red, orange and yellow, often with a hit of purple. Plants are usually sun-lovers, and interest builds throughout summer, reaching a crescendo in August and September. Select a palette of these dazzling brights, combining cheerful daisy-flowered perennials, such as rudbeckia, echinacea and heleniums, with the energetic spikes of red-hot pokers such as Kniphofia caulescens and ‘Bees’ Sunset’. Verbascums, too, produce dramatic spires, while hell-fire-red crocosmia ‘Lucifer’ and a selection of glowing hemerocallis also hold their own. Dahlias are a hot-border staple, with lavish blooms that flower for ages if you keep deadheading them. Try dramatic, spiky, dark red ‘Chat Noir’ or waterlily-flowered ‘Karma Choc’ with ‘Mel’s Orange Marmalade’. Those with sultry, dark foliage are also a fantastic, smouldering addition. The Bishop series is well known, while ‘Roxy’ has hot-pink blooms and ‘Moonfire’ is fabulously orange-toned. Another dramatic foliage plant is Ricinus communis, with dark red palmate leaves. Its flowers create a spatter of scarlet gunshot in a border, while a backdrop of Physocarpus opulifolius ‘Diabolo’ or Cotinus coggygria ‘Royal Purple’ makes a hot border pop. Plants with smaller flowers or a lax habit are useful. Try the airy
Ricinus communis flowers create a spatter of scarlet gunshot…
drumsticks of Knautia macedonica and Verbena bonariensis with salvias and plummy sanguisorbas, woven through with tawny, flowing Stipa tenuissima to unify the whole. Finally, don’t underestimate the impact of annuals in a hot border. Fast-growing and quick to bloom, nasturtiums, sunflowers and even common marigolds and cosmos all fill the gaps and flower their socks off right through summer.