Plants with staying power!

摘要

GEOFF STEBBINGS extols the virtues of his favourite plants that are so eager to please they lust keep on flowering, the whole summer long. Are you fed up with fleeting flowers and flash-in-the-pan blooms? Then you need some plants that will fill your garden with flowers from now until the first frosts. While they might not compete with some early summer flowers for size, they beat them hands down for flower power and most are available in garden centres now to give your garden a lift. Achilleas arebest known as yarrow, the common lawn weed, or the tall yellow varieties of A filipendulina but there is now a wide variety of bright and pastel shades, made especially interesting because the colours fade as the flowers age. You can grow a good range from seed if you sow 'Summer Pastels' and plants will flower the first year from an early sowing, or sow now for plants that to bloom well next summer. In fact, it's best to deadhead them as the flowers fade, to prevent self-seeding and ensure more flowers are produced. Most are neat and self-supporting though young, enthusiatic plants in rich soil get top-heavy and need a few twigs to keep them upright. Otherwise orange 'Terracotta', red 'Feuerland' and pink 'Apfelblute' are easy to accommodate. Some suffer from mildew in dry weather but because the foliage has grey tints anyway, less scrupulous gardeners will not be bothered by this.