Posts Tagged ‘Late Flowering Plants’

Ok, we’ve just had a mini heatwave, but there are a few plants in my garden that are still looking pretty good.  The first star of the show is the Geranium ‘Jolly Bee’ which is one of my favourite plants to use in the garden as it flowers faithfully from May well into October.

This picture was taken yesterday afternoon and you can see just how many flower buds there are still to open.  It’s not a neat tidy plant, prefering to scramble through the other plants in the garden in a lovely informal way but it’s always high on my list when I’m planning a planting scheme because it works very hard for its place in the garden.

Another brilliant long-flowering plant is Aster frikartii ‘Monch’ which comes into flower in mid-summer and goes on until early autumn.  This picture was also taken yesterday.  The flowers are now starting to fade, I suspect because we have had some cool early mornings, but from a distance they still look fabulous, bringing some interest and colour to the garden at a time when it’s not quite summer and not quite autumn.

Penstemon are also long-flowering plants.  This one is ‘Raven’ which has dark purple flowers with white centres.  As you can see, it’s still looking pretty good.  The other variety I use quite a lot is ‘Garnet’ which provides a really good clump of semi-evergreen foliage and flowers all summer long.

When I first moved to our house, long before I learned about design and how to put together a successful planting scheme, I brought this rose on impulse from a well known DIY store…

I wish I knew what variety it is because it’s a real star performer in my garden.  It has flowered repeatedly throughout the summer and, as you can see, is still putting on a spectacular performance on 4th October. It’s pretty disease free too.

Last but not least in the stars of my garden contest is the verbena bonariensis which is looking a little tired when you get close up, but still looks great from a distance.

So what’s still looking good in your garden, do you have any favourites that you couldn’t live without?

It’s been almost 2 months since I last visited Loseley Park so the changes to the garden were really quite dramatic when I popped in there yesterday.  Many of the perennials were just coming to the end of flowering but amazingly, just a day before the garden is closing to the public, there was still something to take photographs of.  Read more

The weather has been a challenge for most gardeners this year, a very hot dry spring followed by a wet cool spell and now it can’t quite work out what it’s doing!  One thing that is certain is the early arrival of the late flowering perennials and my garden is a bloom with plants that don’t normally come into their own until September. Read more