LOVELY LATE-SUMMER PERENNIALS
Keep the colour coming until the first frosts
While some of summer’s most memorable flowers have finished their show for the year, there’s no reason for the garden to run out of steam and lack colour for the rest of the growing season. There are a whole host of late-flowering perennials that keep blooming through autumn and they’ll keep the garden looking ‘summery’ so the new season will be known for its bright, fresh flowers as much as for its ageing leaves and misty mornings!
Growing a late garden
● A lot of late-flowering perennials are often called ‘prairie plants’ because some of them, such as rudbeckia and echinacea, are native to the North American prairies. They’re relatively recent additions to our gardens compared to roses, peonies and other ‘cottage garden’ favourites that tend to flower earlier, but the two groups of plants can work well together in the same border. If you find room for both, then the flowering season in your garden will be much longer.
● Late-flowering perennials will also end up flowering at the same time as some more ‘traditional’ plants. Most repeat-flowering roses will still have another flurry of blooms before the frosts and their liking for clay will work well with fellow clay-lovers, rudbeckia and helenium.
● Probably the most colourful traditional plant to pair with late-flowering perennials are dahlias. If you have dahlias in the border, team them with orange and dark red gaillardias in front, or Verbena bonariensis planted in between for its purple flower heads to weave among the dahlia blooms.
● Others are natural bedfellows for grasses, which can weave in and out of them and provide a wispy, understated backdrop of brown and straw colours to help show off the bright new perennial flowers. Echinaceas blend wonderfully well with grasses, as does lavender-blue flowered perovskia ‘Blue Spire’ (Russian sage).
● The beauty of late-flowering perennials is that as the last flowers begin to age, they bring a more muted palette of colours to the garden, which is also beautiful amid the autumn hues of trees and shrubs. So don’t deadhead the last flushes of flowers, leave them to grow old gracefully.
How to get growing
● Plant late-flowering perennials direct in the ground now. Choose a cool day and plant in the evening to reduce the risk of heat stress.
● Mix a spadeful of well-rotted garden compost into the base of the planting hole to conserve moisture, except for when planting echinaceas and gaura, which both fare well on dry soils.
● Plant at the same depth the plant was in in its pot, then water well after planting, watering until puddles form on the soil. Position your plants in sun or part-shade.
● It may be you’re looking to add a new plant to an area in the garden where space is tight because of plants growing cheek by jowl. In this case, it can be difficult to dig a planting hole big enough. It may be easier to simply place the plant in position in its pot, pushing it an inch down into the soil, if the pot will be hidden by other plants.
● Check your watering. For plants you leave in their pots, do this at least three times a week. For those planted in the ground check twice a week and give them water if the soil or compost has gone dusty and pale.