Keep the colour coming
As summer runs out of steam, make sure that your garden doesn’t go the same way
GARDEN JOURNALIST OF THE YEAR
SEPTEMBER may be just around the corner, but there’s no need to throw in the trowel and admit that summer’s over. Keep the season alive by giving beds, borders and other planting schemes some attention, ensuring that they continue to earn their keep for weeks to come.
Even displays that are completely worn out after the long summer can be brought back to life with a bit of effort. Tackling weeds and editing seedlings, tidying up existing plants and adding a few new specimens for a quick splash of colour will all make a big difference.
I admit it can be difficult to know where to begin when faced with a tired-looking bed or border, but any can be whipped back into shape if you take a methodical approach. Start by staking, pruning and deadheading plants, which makes it easier to clean up at ground level.
Staking perennials is a job that’s normally carried out in early spring. However, some plants that were shored up back then will be getting a tad top-heavy, making them vulnerable to wind or rain. Asters, dahlias, helianthus and others will continue to look good for longer if you give them extra support.
Either tie individual stems with twine to garden canes or shore them up with a cage of canes. To do this, space four canes around the plant, then tie the twine to one of the canes and loop it around the others. Make sure the twine is fairly taut or it won’t support the plants for very long.
An essential task to make certain perennials look smart and bloom for as long as possible is deadheading. Removing fading flowers encourages the formation of new buds, while leaving them in place means plants will divert all of their energy into producing seeds.
Spent flowers on cosmos, lychnis, peonies, dahlias, penstemon, chrysanthemums and many others are easy to remove with a pair of secateurs. Either cut back to a branch or to the cluster of leaves above the soil, depending on the type of plant.
Not all perennials are candidates for deadheading. Among them are sedum, rudbeckia, helenium, achillea, echinacea, veronicastrum, eupatorium and globe thistles. These plants have robust seed heads that provide food for birds and stand up well to the weather, continuing to add sculptural interest until winter.
Perennials that have come to the end of their main flowering period can be given tougher treatment. Anchusa, lamprocapnos, lupins, Alchemilla mollis and several others can be cut back hard to remove untidy foliage. It may look harsh, yet plants will respond with a flush of fresh new foliage from the crown.
Once you can move in the border, turn your attention to the surface of the soil. Use a hoe to dispatch annual weeds and dig up any stubborn perennial ones. Verbena bonariensis, thalictrum, montbretia, Japanese anemones and many other perennials can spread like crazy, so remove unwanted seedlings. I like to lift perennial seedlings carefully with a hand fork, making sure that the roots remain more or less intact. These are moved to small pots and grown on, providing me with stock to plant elsewhere or to replace any that might perish over winter. Some people give these freebies away to friends or neighbours. At this point it pays to feed everything in the border with a fertiliser high in potash to encourage more buds and flowers to form. Use liquid tomato food or sulphate of potash, avoiding products containing large amounts of nitrogen, as this will result in lots of new leafy growth that will be vulnerable to frost.
IF YOUR garden really lacks colour, plug gaps with potgrown perennials that are already starting to flower or, even better, that are packed with buds to ensure the spectacle doesn’t end too soon. Arrange them in threes or fives for maximum impact.
Another option is to plant lateflowering ornamental grasses, such as pennisetum, deschampsia and calamagrostis. My favourites are miscanthus, with their feather-like plumes of silver, white, pink, red and purple flowers that appear from late summer until mid-autumn.
Taller grasses look wonderful rubbing shoulders with shrubs and perennials at the back of beds and borders, and shorter varieties will add texture, movement and colour towards the front. The strong architectural shape of larger species also makes them suitable for growing as specimens.
Apart from tackling beds and borders, spend some time giving summer-flowering bedding plants a pick-me-up, whether they’re in the ground, pots or hanging baskets. Water plants daily – twice a day during dry periods – to slake their thirst, and feed every week with a high-potash fertiliser.
Petunias, begonias and pelargoniums will continue to churn out new flowers until the first frosts if you pinch off fading ones. The only bedding plants that aren’t worth the bother of deadheading are tagetes, lobelia and others with masses of tiny, fiddly flowers.