Keeping the show going

Increasingly common Indian summers are giving us ever longer seasons for spending time outside in our gardens … so make sure there is still plenty to enjoy in yours in the months to come.

If you ‘Hampton Hacked’ your perennials in July you should now have fresh flushes of flowers and regrowth reinvigorating your beds and borders.

And there are plenty more perennials that only reach their flowering peak in later summer and autumn, helping you to ring the changes.

Having had the advantage of a long growing season many of these plants provide plenty of height, creating a cocooning effect in your garden, including many of the Verbenas, Asters (Michaelmas daisy), Helianthus (sunflower family), Rudbeckias, Japanese Anemones and statuesque Salvias such as Amistad and Phyllis Fancy.

These are generally best planted in clumps towards the backs of borders, with shorter earlier flowerers nearer the front, to allow you to achieve a succession of blooms.

Hot colours come to the fore at this time of year with the likes of Kniphofia (red hot pokers), Dahlias, Fuchsias, Heleniums, Lysimachia, Alstroemerias (Peruvian lily) and Crocosmia.

Penstemons will also provide reliable interest over a long period, as will shrubby Salvias.

Modern breeding has given us lots of new varieties that are improvements on their traditional counterparts, either by having stronger, stockier growth, longer flowering seasons, or better disease resistance, so if you didn’t have luck with a plant in the past, it might be time to try again!