Planting now for late summer colour - easy tricks and tips

New planting colour combinations for the summer season. Plus: container ideas for April, primroses, and Chelsea Flower Show anxieties

If you’re landing here for the first time, welcome - it’s great that you’ve found us, at EXACTLY the right time of the gardening year. There’s lots going on here - garden design ideas, easy gardening how-tos, plant recommendations, general garden chat, border planting design tips and tricks and lots more. If you’d like to join in, I’d love it:

Photo: Jelle Grintjes

It’s such an intriguing plant, and there’s something about its colours that’s so hard to pin down that it made me desperate to create a combination for it, something that hasn’t been done before

• It’s been a whirlwind of a week: visits to see my plants for the RHS Chelsea Flower Show, and visits to the long-suffering landscape contractors who are working on an effect that will make or break this garden. If I tell you that I’ve banned them from using the word ‘challenging’, you’ll get an idea of how difficult it is proving. But that’s Chelsea for you. This is year is definitely The Last Time. I’ve included some snaps below for those of you who like a peek behind the scenes.

• I know that it feels as if it’s gone from winter to summer in an instant, and I don’t want to wish time away, but it’s that time of year when I’m thinking ahead to that July gap, after everything has finished its first flowering. Having spent what feels like a lifetime researching colour for The Gardener’s Palette, my mission is to give you as many planting colour combinations and palettes and moods as possible. Today, inspired by one specific plant, I’ve put together a new collection of plants to fill that yawning late summer colour chasm.

• If you’re heading out to buy plants, do you find it tricky to decide how many plants to use in a flowerbed? If so, this is a must-read:

Also in today’s post:

• There’s a container idea for April.

• We’re going to take a look at primroses.

• Thank you to everyone who has bought a copy of The New Romantic Garden - it’s been great meeting lots of you, and it just makes me so happy that the point of the book is coming across: that although it looks like a coffee table book, it’s actually a lot more than that.

• Welcome if you’re new to The Gardening Mind: if you’re looking for the Small Garden Design course, you can join this year’s at any time to suit you, here.

• The Chat has become a huge part of this gardening community - if you’re a paid subscriber you can start conversations, ask gardening questions, and post photos. It’s taken on a life of its own, so do use it. In our Sunday regular Show Us Your Plots on the Chat, you can show us what your garden, or any green space near you, is looking like - we’d love to see - and we’re not judgemental! All-comers from everywhere are welcome and we have members from all over the world. Please come and join in - we’d LOVE to see you there.

Let’s recap for a moment for new members of The Gardening Mind:

It’s April, and I know it might seem a bit early to be thinking ahead to July borders, but now is exactly the right time to be planning them

It may seem early to be thinking about late summer; at this very moment the tulips are having their heyday and the first perennials are just coming into leaf, and it’s hard to imagine May, let alone the later summer, but if you’ve ever had that Main Monochrome Moment in July, you’ll know exactly what I mean.

What’s the Main Monochrome Moment?

Next month, in May, your garden will probably look beautiful: everything you planted either in autumn or March will be flowering away next month, and your garden will now coast nicely along until the end of June. The roses will have been flowering their socks off since mid-May, and their planting partners such as hardy geraniums and salvias, will for weeks have been pumping out that much-needed colour.

It looks wonderful - perfect, in fact. Whether relaxed or natural or tidily manicured, your garden will make you feel happy every time you see it, and it’ll remind you just how worthwhile it was to have spent all those rainy weekends indoors, planning and poring over catalogues. The picture has been painted, it’s on display, and everything is just right.

And this is precisely when the Main Monochrome Moment strikes

Suddenly, all the colour disappears. The roses need a break in order to gather their reserves and prepare for a second flush of flowers; the geraniums are getting straggly and need a chop-back in order to encourage another blooming. There’s a lot of green everywhere, but somehow, something - some colour, all colour - goes missing, and it’ll stay missing for another month or so.

This moment catches me out every year in my own garden. I’m usually so busily concentrating on the general excitement of the first flowers after another long grey winter that I give all my attention and all the space over to these May/June favourites. And, predictably, every year, the garden then drains of all colour apart from green for a few weeks whilst it catches up with itself.

But you can avoid this, and that’s why I want to tell you about it now, rather than waiting till it’s actually happening in July, when it’s too late to do anything about it by then.

This week, there’s a reminder of the plants in this palette above, along with a brand new, contrasting collection that I’ve put together for those of you who prefer a slightly warmer colour combination for the summer season.

I’ve created this new planting grouping for you, inspired by rather a special perennial as the starting point. Take a look at this beauty: I had a huge amount of fun coming up with a colour scheme that would work with these gorgeous shades:

Aren’t the colours just exquisite? There’s something almost edible, tutti-frutti, fruit salady about these shades of this mystery plant, which are intriguingly caused by something of an optical illusion in those furled petals: