Dazzle with exuberant yellow and orange
Create a blast of late summer sunshine with rudbeckia, sunflowers and kniphofia
These two colours define late summer, but do be aware that yellow blows hot and cold, providing cool lemons and golden yellows. Lemon flowers are less common now, but certain plants do deliver and generally need a darker partner in purple or blue.
Helianthus ‘Lemon Queen’ provides lots of cooler yellow, as does achillea ‘Moonshine’, which will repeat flower until October; its filigree grey foliage is a real bonus. Use them with annual blue clary, blue cornflowers, or later-flowering blue geranium ‘Rozanne’, a hardy cranesbill that covers a yard of ground, so give it space.
Golden yellows abound, running through the season like a thread. There are plenty of rudbeckias, heleniums and helianthus to weave through tall grasses and perennials and the best front-of-border blackeyed Susan is Deam’s sunflower (Rudbeckia fulgida deamii). Its crisp
yellow daises middled in chocolatebrown persist for several weeks with a mound of deep-green foliage. Grow it with the pale-blue bobbles of Succisella inflexa ‘Frosted Pearls’, or late hemerocallis ‘Red Precious’.
Perennial sunf lowers cut very well, but some have bad habits and become thuggish. Their flowers always face the sun, so position them carefully. Go for helianthus ‘Capenoch Star’, fully double ‘Loddon Gold’ and anemone-centred ‘Meteor’.
Taller red-orange helenium ‘Flammenspiel’ (dancing flames) is always magnificent in September, rising to shoulder height. Or, go for redder ‘Septemberfuchs’ or golden, slightly shorter ‘Goldrausch’. Their beedevelop friendly flowers a fuzzy thimble that turns from brown to gold, although they may require extra water in August.
African marigolds also provide warm mahoganyred and golden yellow, and the taller ones are airy and easy to grow. Good gap fillers include Tagetes patula ‘Tall Scotch Prize’, ‘Pots of Gold’, ‘Mr Majestic’ and ‘Red Knight’.
South African plants also thrive now and some later crocosmias and kniphofias flower well in September. The latest poker is Kniphofia rooperi, whose almost-triangular orange heads look sumptuous planted with blue aconitums, or airy grasses such as Molinia caerulea ‘Transparent’.
Their flowers develop a fuzzy thimble that turns from brown to gold