Summer bedding plants add a rainbow of colour to your garden, but as the autumn months approach, they can start to fade – so what are the best late summer flowers to keep your garden looking great for as long as possible?
The best late summer garden plants are a little hardier than those midsummer plants, so think about bushes and shrubs rather than delicate summer bedding plants.
It’s also a great time of year to store any summer flower seeds you took from your bedding plants this year. Picked from the flower heads and stored in a dry place, they should be ready for planting after the last winter frost of the new year.
Hydrangea are popular summer garden plants and Hydrangea paniculata is particularly prized for its pretty late summer flowers and neat cone-shaped flower heads, which bring variety and interest to your borders.
Suitable for colder, north-facing planting positions, H. paniculata has attractive foliage that lasts well beyond the flowering season, to keep your shrubberies looking appealing into late autumn.
If you struggle with waterlogged soil during the rainy autumn months, Lobelia cardinalis could be the solution you’ve been looking for.
The bright red blooms of L. cardinalis might look delicate, but it’s a surprisingly hardy plant and thrives in moist soil, for example when planted close to an ornamental pond.
With the flowering season lasting from August to October, it’s also among the best late summer flowers to give you a splash of blood-red colour in the run-up to Halloween.
Lavender is usually not listed among late summer flowers, as it blooms earlier in the year, but its hardy evergreen foliage can keep flowerbeds looking alive through the winter months.
When grown directly in the ground, lavender – especially English lavender – can withstand all but the most extreme weather conditions, and its late summer flower seeds can also attract feeding birds like goldfinches.
An alternative to lavender, Verbena bonariensis has pretty purple flowers that appear in July and last throughout the late summer months into autumn.
Best planted in groups, V bonariensis loves to be part of a crowd of its own kind, but a single plant can easily be lost in a busy border. So add groups to your beds and borders, and enjoy the ocean-like waves of swaying foliage around dusk on autumn days.
This one has seen a resurgence in popularity in recent years, so there’s a good chance of finding it at your local garden centre – time to hop on the bandwagon!
Sedum, also known as stonecrops, are a genus of summer garden plants well suited to drought conditions, as they love hot, sunny weather and cope well with dry spells.
With about 500 different varieties, these leafy succulent summer plants produce blooms with plenty of personality and appeal.
And if you think you’ve heard of sedum, but you’re not sure where, you might be thinking of sedum roofs, as they’re often used to plant green roofs.
Autumn is also a perfect time to lay new turf, so now is the time to start thinking about what you’ll need.
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