This opulent planting scheme teams velvet-red dahlias with agastache spikes. Helen Billiald explains how to get the look
Every garden needs a few late-flowering revellers to keep the party going until Jack Frost calls time at the bar. Dahlias are key late-colour plants and in this border, two velvet-red cultivars add a flash of opulence, echoed by the equally vivid Lobelia cardinalis ‘Queen Victoria’ and Salvia splendens ‘Blaze of Fire’.
As a vivid contrast for all the luxurious red flowers, this theatrical planting scheme is threaded through with drifts of blue agastache, its upright spikes all standing to attention, above feathery clouds of silver artemisia. This is one latesummer border your eye won’t be skipping over!
Blue, silvery-green and red with yellow highlights
Agastache ‘Blue Fortune’ ‘Blaze of Fire’