ALL FIRED UP

Later summer is the time of reds and oranges, rich burnt colours, mingled with pinks and purples… anything goes at this time of year. As the season progresses and the sun lowers in the sky, the changing light levels intensify the colours even more. This display will extend into autumn, getting bigger and better, and culminating in a crescendo of fireworks. I hope it will inspire you to create a dazzling floral pyrotechnic display of your own. How to achieve the look My partner made this container using a discarded tailgate as the frontispiece. The rest was built using offcuts of plywood screwed together. We added drainage holes, covered these with polystyrene chips, and placed it in position in a sunny spot before filling with a loamy compost. Salvias are an extremely versatile genus, coming in a wide variety of forms and colours. S. confertiflora gets very tall, and is best grown each year from cuttings, which are great for container planting as they will flower within a season. The dark-purple stems of both salvias pick up on the moody, almost black petals of Dahlia ‘Verrone’s Obsidian’. The orange petals of D. ‘Jescot Julie’ are backed in red, giving a stripy effect – a combination repeated on the trumpets of Crocosmia x crocosmiiflora ‘Harlequin’. Its lance-like foliage contrasts well with the ferny leaves of Tagetes ‘Burning Embers’. This annual is great for borders and pots alike, with a long flowering season; I’ve previously teamed it with the tangerine dahlias ‘Nicholas’ and ‘Autumn Fairy’. Collect seed each year to develop your own strain and sow indoors, February to March. The double-flowered apricot nasturtium will clamber through everything but is sterile, so take cuttings in late summer. A weekly high-potash feed will encourage flowering, but watch out for earwigs on the dahlias.