Which summer flowers last longest?

It seems like summer’s only just arrived – but already lupins have gone over, many roses are past their best, and peonies have shed their flowers. You need to choose carefully if you want longer-lasting blooms. With this in mind, awardwinning garden designer and BBC Gardeners’ World presenter Nick Bailey, author of 365 Days Of Colour In Your Garden, offers his picks for plants which will flower through summer and beyond...

ANISODONTEA ‘EL RAYO’

This South African plant from the Lavatera family is incredibly fast-growing and floriferous, he enthuses. “It will go from

1ft to 6ft in a year in a southfacing position, as the cupshaped mid-pink flowers with a burgundy blotch at the base. The extraordinary thing about it is that it never stops flowering for 365 days of the year,” Bailey adds. It can grow to 2m so is ideally placed at the back of a border, or you could plant a number of them in a row to create a divide, used as a design tool to buffer boundaries.

ROSA ‘BENGAL CRIMSON’

“This is extraordinary in that it flowers 365 days a year, which makes it unique. It’s very close to the wild rose species, which means less pest and disease problems. I’ve never known it to have pest and disease problems,” says Bailey. “The flower tone changes in winter, when it becomes a red-pink rather than crimson.It wants a rich soil, a sunny spot, and you don’t need to prune it and it’s nearly thornless. It will grow to around 3m if unpruned, but you can train it flatter on a wall. You can also grow it in a pot, but it will need richer feed specifically for roses in a container.”

NEMESIA ‘CONFETTI’

“If you put these in a warm spot in winter, under cover or next to the walls of your house, they won’t stop flowering long after summer has gone,” says Bailey. “This South African plant has a slightly musky scent and little bits of dead material occasionally need to be removed from it, but otherwise it’s a great plant to have in a container or series of containers to give a foamy form, and it will spill over the edge of a container and flower endlessly.”

GERANIUM WALLICHIANUM ‘LILAC ICE’

“Everybody knows Geranium ‘Rozanne’, the almost foreverflowering purple geranium. It comes from a species called wallichianum and at the same time, a number of other plants were developed which aren’t as well-known but do exactly the same as ‘Rozanne’. These include ‘Lilac Ice’, an off-white with lilac and pink. It is just as vigorous as Rozanne and you’ll get about eight months’ flowering from it.”

HYDRANGEA PANICULATA ‘WIM’S RED’

“This shrub goes through lime notes, pinks and ultimately a fairly rich red. It flowers for around six months, from late June to November, but changes through the season, adding that extra dynamic.”

365 Days Of Colour In Your Garden by Nick Bailey is published by Octopus, priced £25.