Keep blooming

Extend summer’s show in the garden with your choice of plants and how you care for them

- Leigh Clapp

While many gardens are at their peak in May and June it’s possible to keep the colour going right through summer into autumn with sustainable, tough plants that cope with the increased heat from climate change.

It’s the hot colours that come to the fore at the brightest time of the year as they can stand up to the intensity, while pale colours tend to look washed out, apart from ones in the shade. As summer’s light intensifies rich colours work particularly well together, and you can always temper them with more muted tones. Hot colours give energy and warmth. Reds are passionate and add strong focus to an area. They work well with opulent purples or their complementary greens. The tonal range of reds in nature is vast – from the young foliage of roses, berberis foliage, through to clear red poppies or claret and burgundy toned heucheras.

Orange is a colour that more than any other elicits a strong response from the viewer maligned by some as too garish, and loved by others for the vibrant energy it brings to a space, think of kniphofias (hot pokers) adding life to a sea of parchment grasses. Whether looking back to the 1970s and retro design, or even further back to the likes of Gertrude Jekyll who used it as an eye-catching way to add life to her borders; orange in its full range of tones, from high-impact flamboyance to pastels, is seeing a renaissance in the garden.