The 7 best plants for late summer garden success

A friend recently told me how brilliant her late summer garden was looking.

This simple, pretty treatment lines a neighbour’s path. A row of verbena bonariensis looks charming against a fence.

I’m pretty pleased with ours, too, provided no-one looks too closely at the bare patches and the weeds.

The dahlias are the star of our garden at the moment. Here Dahlia ‘Labyrinth’ reminds me of some of our best sunsets.

But there were three of us in the conversation. The third person shook her head sadly. ‘Late summer is no good for my garden…it’s over by now.’

These rudbeckias in another neighbour’s garden caught my eye while walking the dog.

I was thinking about the conversation as I walked the dog yesterday. Some front gardens around us are looking outstanding now. Others have faded away.

Are some gardens just better at certain times of year? Maybe you have to decide whether you’re a June garden person or an August garden person?

Cosmos is another good late summer garden plant. Seen here at Doddington Place Gardens in August.

I don’t think so. The holy grail of middlesized gardens is that we want to look good all year round, or for as long as possible. The late summer garden is an important ingredient in that.

I think that late summer garden plants get less attention than spring and early summer plants. The RHS Chelsea Flower Show is the gardening equivalent of London Fashion Week, setting the pace for garden fashion for the rest of the year.

But that means that spring and midsummer planting get all the publicity and admiration. They are seen in a design context, so it’s easier to imagine how to use them in your own garden. Cow parsley, for example, gets much more publicity than dahlias.

Grasses and dahlias look good for months on end.

But if you want a garden to look good for a long time, then you’d choose dahlias.

Hydrangeas are another plant that offers huge choice, a long season and are easy to look after. But, apart from Hydrangea arborescens ‘Annabelle’, you don’t see many hydrangeas in designer gardens.

Our Hydrangea arborescens ‘Annabelle’ is at its best in August. However, its position as the ‘chic hydrangea’ may be slipping as you do see rather alot of it about. Sorry about the weeds on the terrace!

Posy Gentles and I started discussing which plants were best for the late summer garden. We came up with dahlias, hydrangeas, fuschias, unusual bedding plants such as cleome, all the daisy types such as helenium and rudbeckia, late summer roses, echinacea and verbena bonariensis.

All the hydrangeas, dahlias, fuschias and roses come in a very wide range of colours and styles, so there would be something for every garden style.

I think this rose is ‘Just Joey’ – looking good in yet another neighbour’s garden. Most of the pictures in this post came from one dog walk, which shows how abundant gardens can be at this time of year.

Cleome ‘Violet Queen’ with Erysimum ‘Bowles Mauve’ in the background. Bowles Mauve seems to flower from April to November, and sometimes all through the winter.

Once we started to list the plants that look good in August, we couldn’t stop. Which are your favourites?

 

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