What are the best colourful flowering summer plants for a sunny garden.
Answer ... Bedding plants are always the nations favourite when it comes to adding colour to bland gaps or filling in whilst an otherwise sparsely planted shrub or herbaceous border gets established. They can make the new garden look warm and welcoming in a small matter of weeks and easily pushed aside by the more permanent residents as they begin to establish themselves. However unless you grow them yourself from seed they can prove an expensive stop-gap.
These plants are often the half-hardy annuals listed in the seed catalogues and therefore not tolerant of frost. Petunias, begonias, nicotianas, marigolds, graniums and mesembryanthemums are all the types of plants that you could start from seed or buy as small plants to plant out in your own garden once the threat of frosts have subsided.
If your garden is relatively slug and snail free, a more economic option at the right time of year would be to sow some packets of annual seed straight out in the ground. Sowing them in informal swathes on prepared ground could not be easier. It is important to sow them in rows within the informal shape so that you can distinguish the freshly emergent seedlings from the weeds. As they grow up, you thin out them out and the rows naturally become informalised. These are the plants generally listed as HARDY ANNUALS, ranging from the likes of Larkspur, Californian poppies, poached-egg plant, nasturtiums, nigella, sunflowers and many more. Many seed suppliers like Thompson and Morgan and Suttons will sell economic mixes that are fragrant, or will attract butterflies, that are colour co-ordinated, or even suit a particular soil condition.
The truly British style of perennials in informal beds, giving that renown cottage garden effect, can be an expensive scene to establish in one season, but worth it for the colour and the quality in style. Although once considered a labour intensive style of gardening with all the necessary staking and tying, with modern varieties of plants that are self supporting, the maintenance is down to annual cutting back and mulching. Every five years or so, plants have to be lifted and divided. These would include the likes of asters, campanula, lupins, hollyhocks, penstomen, rudbeckia and chrysanthemums, which between them will keep a border in colour for the whole of the summer.
Of course the British tradition of compromise allows for all of these approaches in even the smallest of gardens, quite often on top of and around a basic flowering shrub planting.