10 plants with high summer PIZAZZ!

In the harsh sun of August, flower-colours can look washed-out and flat.  What is needed are some plants that will shine brightly in high summer, popping and fizzing in answer to glaring light.  

Don your shades, here we go with some of our favourite zingers………

1. What wonderful summer-flowerers perennial phloxes are!  They like sun and good living (they’re not alone there 😊) and when they are happy, they can make a summer border really sing. They can be troubled by quite a few pests and diseases – eelworm, mildew etc. so perhaps I’ve just been lucky with mine, but I’ve found them fairly problem-free.  So far.

I’ve got a clump of white ones in the pale colours of my cottage garden (P. paniculata var. alba), beautifully-scented and they almost shine in the dark of a summer night.  But the one that is milking all the compliments at the moment is P. ‘Blue Paradise’, whose domed violet-mauve perfumed flowers and attracting bees and butterflies like it’s a sweetshop. 

Two more things quickly. 1. Deadhead Phlox to get more flowers further down the stem. 2. You can ‘Chelsea Chop’ Phlox at the end of May and it flowers about four weeks later than normal. I cut about half the stems down to about half their length at that time, and then I get a REALLY long season of flower.

2. Do you have any tropical-looking plants in your garden?  I am generally a fan of a softer look, but sometimes August demands more heft and presence.  I was looking around a garden the other day and the boldly-striped foliage of their cannas looked almost surreally dramatic. It reminded me that one of the most telling occupants of my ‘hot’ borders is Phormium ‘Jester’. Its apricot and lime-green striped straps are just right for the season – a robust fountain of long-lasting (indeed ‘evergreen’) chutzpah.

3. My last choice is possibly controversial because it’s not really a ‘player’ in the summer border.  And that’s because it’s about 10ft higher than anything else. The purple thistle flowers on the cardoons look like they tingle with electricity on a bright August day.

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Not being quite sure what Elaine thinks qualifies as PIZAZZ! (note the capitals and an exclamation mark), I looked up its definition to find it’s ‘an attractive combination of vitality and glamour.’ Neither of these nouns are regularly applied by my sisters either to me or my garden choices, which are variously described as understated, curious or just plain weird. But I went on a hunt around the garden and actually did find a few plants which are certainly cutting a bit of a dash, all rather accidentally as it turns out.

4. The first was also a phlox. My garden is too dry to support the perennial ones that Elaine is (rather irritatingly) raving about, but there was a free packet of an annual Phlox ‘Creme Brûlée’ with Gardens Illustrated this spring. They looked dreadful when young, floppy and sappy, so I cut them hard back and stuck them out of sight in a pot with a few other randoms. I now have to eat my words as they have blossomed into the prettiest mosaic of cream, pink and lilac coloured flowers with delicate veining.

5. Next it was an abutilon that caught my eye. I’ve been growing A. ‘Estella’s Little Bird’ for a few years now, trying, and failing to get it grow upwards and spread out into a bush like my other abutilons. So I just abandoned the new cuttings on a high shelf in the shady end of the glasshouse and busied myself with other projects. Turns out that’s just what they liked, and they’re now draping themselves over the edge of the pots and flowering their socks off.

6. Then it was round to my pots of agapanthus, expecting them to be on the wane after their six weeks of glorious flowering to remember that I added A. inapertus ‘Graskop’ to my collection last summer and it appears to much later flowering than others and very dramatic. Almost black buds opening to the deepest midnight blue downward facing flowers that the bees were already going bonkers for.

7. My final accidental success was the colour I painted our newly reglazed conservatory. In a rush as usual I just grabbed a pot of trade paint claiming to be ‘Terracotta’ but turning out to be more the colour of the tomato soup I made recently (recipe at the end of the blog) but actually showed off the purple of my passionflower ‘Amethyst’ to such an extent that it created, in my humble opinion, a cameo of real PIZAZZ.

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Nothing fundamentally wrong with my sisters’ choices of course, but a bit top heavy (cardoons) and tender (abutilon/passionflower – why does Laura assume we all have indoor growing spaces?). Here in the Scottish Highlands on top of PIZAZZ, plants need a bit of heft..a bit of bounce-back-ability if not, this week, the stamina of a Navy Seal in the face of Storm Floris).

8. With this in mind I’d recommend Kniphofia – specifically ‘nobilis’ which has established itself in the manner of a royal dynasty within its own principality at the top of my south-facing border. 

It appears to be wholly hardy and remains prominently above ground all year, oozing confidence until it sets about sending up its truly magnificent spires with no great haste but enormous drama in August. Not just PIZAZZ, this has backbone and the aura of majesty – I wouldn’t let it hear you calling it a Red Hot Poker.

9. Whilst I’ve got the baton I’m going to recommend Alstroemeria ‘Indian Summer’ too, much to my sisters’ chagrin as they consider them blingy and brash (and I haven’t even got on to my admiration for begonias yet!). A. ‘Indian Summer’ fits my ‘ballsy’ criteria as it can get badly frosted here when it first emerges. But undeterred it presses on to deliver tall, chocolatey foliage, gorgeous crimson buds and then boom, my favourite colour combo – pink and yellow – making a wonderful show for months and months.

10. Finally let’s hear it for Rudbeckia ‘Goldsturm’. Can we all agree this is a national treasure? True, its leaves can look a bit scrappy in early summer but suddenly, like an actress recognising her cue, it straightens up and bursts forth with an abundance of rich, jolly yellow flowers that just smack of high summer.  Never mind my sisters’ finicky specialisms; disregard anything that needs staking; reject the daily dead-heading prima donnas; instead double-down on PIZAZZ by choosing RAZZLE-DAZZLE Rudbeckia! 

What plants are lighting up your borders during high summer? We’d love to hear about them.

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These gorgeous seed heads are an added bonus to this tough but pretty clematis which is Louise’s Great Plant this Month. Click on the image below to find out what it is.

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This attractive large wire basket is perfect for harvesting veg from the kitchen garden. It has plenty of room to gather enough for everybody and its airy structure keeps produce fresh for longer.

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