Simple ideas for increasing the summer colour in your garden this year
by tim ·
As with most things gardening is all about planning ahead. The key to creating some summer colour in July and August is to take action now and start to grow a few seedlings and start a few corns and tubers. The GardenAdvice team have come up with 10 ideas for plants to produce summer colour that you can start to work on now.
- Sweet peas – sowing a few seeds now on a windowsill and planting out in the spring will produce a great show of flowers available as cut flowers in late summer.
- Dahlias – pot up a few tubers in a 100 mm pots and water keep in a warm place then when the shoots start to show place them inside in a summer position then plant out in the spring – if the springs late and they start to produce lots of growth this can be used for stem cuttings producing more plants. A great plant for summer colour.
- Sun Flowers – start a few seeds in pots now inside on a windowsill ready to plant out in the spring – a great project for children. When the flowers have finished they can be cut and hung to dry a a wildbird food to feed your garden birds in the winter.
- Cosmos and Pyrethrum – sowing a few seeds on a windowsill now will produce plant that can be planted out in the spring to produce some summer flowers.
- Skimmia Japonica – At this time of year one of the easiest plants to take stem cutting from placing the cuttings on a windowsill in 75 mm pots the cutting will root in 10 to 20 days ans start to grow away to
- Clematis jackmanii – a couple of clematis jackmanii planted at the base of a couple of the larger shrubs in your garden. The clematis will steady grow through the shrubs almost unseen
- Rudbeckia Godlsturm – sowing a few seeds now directly in the grown under a cloche or bell jar will produce a some later summer flowers with the plants lasting year after year.
- Campsis or Trumpet vine – sow a few seeds now under some mulch as the base of a fence or a tree and these plants will germinate as the weather warms and grow away into climbing plants to provide colour in the late summer.
- Wall flowers or Cheiranthus – Sowing a few seeds directly into your garden soil now under a small bell jar or cloche . They will germinate and grow on and the protection can be removed in the spring. Not traditionally a late summer flowering plant but with climate change flower now seems to start in August if sown early in the year.
