7 hours ago
7
We’re on the brink of June: long days, start of summer, often wetter than people bargain for – and time to act on the gaps that can appear in borders in July if we’re not careful. It’s awkward that summer is both the time most people think about gardening and the worst time to plant anything: you really want reliable rainfall and moist soil to get things off to a good start. But if you have had a spectacular spring and aren’t expecting much to turn up over summer, now is the time to act.
My advice is slightly vicarious: I’m currently on a plant-buying ban. My garden will probably be an inaccessible building site for most of the summer, so it seems daft to indulge when everything feels so expensive. I have, however, bent the rules slightly for plants grown and sold by local charitable gardens: 100 Gladiolus murielae corms, and two packets of Chiltern Seeds’ easy-peasy mix after the neighbouring cats turned my wildflower patch into a litterbox. Apart from that, I’m sticking to donations and volunteers.
It’s doubly tricky at this time of year because the garden centres are abundant with flowering things that look hugely inviting. Those flowering things, though, require a great deal of energy. During the summer months, while everything is getting its growth on, it’s no wonder people complain that they are always killing their plants.
There are, however, some things you can plant now that will assist with that gap in July. Salvias are real doers in the garden: they’re perennial, so they’ll keep coming back, unlike the bedding plants that tend to take the limelight at this time of year. They’re great bedfellows for roses, too, as the aromatic oils in their leaves help combat blackspot and hide those thorny stems. Fast‑forward to November and salvias will still be in flower, especially if you deadhead them.
Dahlias are a classic midsummer flower. I write them off too easily because I associate them with slug-removal and copious staking and feeding. However, you might be able to get a deal online on potted ones at the moment (don’t buy tubers yet!) and they will give you dozens of show-stopping flowers until the first frosts.
Hylotelephium, or sedums, are another midsummer workhorse that it’s definitely not too late to plant. They are also perennials, and they’re good in pots or borders, tolerant of most things aside from excessive watering, and really easy to lift and divide once they’ve stopped flowering in the autumn. And divisions, as I am currently hyper-aware, don’t count as buying plants.
