Border Rescue

Create a sunny hot border with colour-themed flowers and foliage. Ian Hodgson shows how

Q How can I make more of this sunny border? I’d like to hide the fence

THIS SUNNY SPOT is the perfect open location for a late-summer hot border. The existing plants are obviously thriving and there’s been a valiant effort to bring the neighbour’s purple buddleia into the planting scheme using flashes of purple Verbena bonariensis and blue hardy geraniums. For extra depth in the colour scheme I think the border needs a bit of black or purple foliage to give the red flowers a bold contrast and, at the other end of the scale, maybe a flash of warm yellow or orange as a highlight to brighten things up. The apricotorange kniphofia in our border plan and jazzy dahlia ‘Moonfire’ would help the palette look more rounded. Because the border is backed by quite a low fence, it’s a good idea to add more height for extra privacy, replacing the star jasmine on the trellis (which looks a bit lost) with a bold honeysuckle such as Lonicera brownii ‘Dropmore Scarlet’. I would also plant purple-leaved Cotinus coggygria ‘Royal Purple’ (or a dwarf cultivar such as ‘Lilla’) to help balance the buddleia, its dark foliage chiming in with other dark-leaved plants such as dahlia ‘Moonfire’, Lobelia cardinalis (if the soil is damp enough), red canna ‘Tropicanna Black’ and some purple heucheras such as H. villosa ‘Palace Purple’ for fancy foliage at the front of the border. Both the dahlia tubers and canna rhizomes should be lifted in autumn to overwinter in a frost-free shed or similar. If you suspect the dark heucheras might look too recessive, go for biscuity-coloured ‘Caramel’ or ‘Marmalade’ that will team well with the apricot and warm-orange flowers. The red zonal pelargonium, antirrhinum and crocosmia will cope well with full sun. You could add monarda ‘Gardenview Scarlet’ and penstemon ‘Andenken an Friedrich Hahn’ too.