Want to keep your garden blooming all season long? These 14, long-flowering, season-extenders bloom at just the right time to help you carry the color from one season to the next.
Most gardens have periods of downtime when nothing much is blooming. This post covers tips to help you combat those unwanted gaps to keep the color coming.
It's part of a series of blog posts sharing my "Four C's of Continuous Color". This post covers tip number four: "Carryover" plants. To see the other tips, visit the homepage of my garden journal or Garden Gate Magazine's YouTube tour.
When I first created Cape Cottage Garden, it had four distinct "downtime" periods:
1) Early May (after the tulips but before the peonies and irises) 2) Mid to Late June (after the roses but before the daylilies, daisies, and coneflowers) 3) Early August (after the daylilies) 4) October in general (my garden used to peter out by this time) Let me introduce you to 14 long-flowering bloomers that have helped me close these four gaps.
1) Early May Carryover Plants
I love May-blooming tulips such as 'Menton', 'Dordogne', and my all-time favorite May tulip, 'Camargue'. But some years, these beauties only carry me through the first week of May, leaving a few-week gap before the clematis, peonies, and irises bloom.
Here are a few long-blooming selections that flower in my Zone 7A, New Jersey garden in early May and keep on blooming for weeks to fill the gap.
'Petit Henri' (Ragged Robin):
Lychnis 'Petite Henri' is a white form of the ragged robin wildflower from Europe. It has masses of frilly, double flowers and blooms for many weeks, beginning in early May in my NJ garden. The base petals are maroon, creating added interest. It's a frothy, joyful plant that fits well with my cottage style, plus it's deer-resistant. I give these undemanding plants very little care, except for a top trim when the mounds have finished blooming.
'Jack Frost' Brunnera:
This shade-loving plant offers long-blooming, blue blooms in early May that look like forget-me-knots. Brunnera blooms for many weeks, and the foliage looks stunning after the blooms are done. I let the blooms of my 'Jack Frost' cultivar go to seed to get more plants for free.
Silene 'Rolly's Favorite':
'Rolly's Favorite' silene is my favorite carryover plant. In my garden, it begins blooming in late April. Its redish-pink blooms keep going until early to mid-June. It's very floriferous and undemanding. If I trim the spent stalks, the plant will rebloom, although never as fully as the first time. Is there another carryover plant in Cape Cottage Garden that blooms for longer than this one? I'm not sure. Offering me six to eight weeks of bloom, 'Rolly's Favorite' is a "must-have" garden plant for me.
'Everest' and 'Purple Sensation' Alliums:
The lollipop shapes of alliums add interest to the garden in early May (and beyond). 'Purple Sensation' (the purple blooms) and 'Everest' (the tall white blooms) are the first to bloom in early May, picking up where the tulips leave off. While these cultivars don't offer weeks of bloom as stand-alone plants, I've been able to sequence different varieties of alliums together to keep the show going for months, from early May to early July.
Runners Up:
A few runners up that also bloom for me in early May are pictured above. Dutch iris (left) and Spanish bluebells (Hyacinthoides hispanica) (middle) are beautiful, but aren't particularly long-blooming. On the other hand, lovely, lacy orlaya 'White Finch' (right) blooms for many weeks with deadheading. I love it. It's an annual but reseeds vigorously. Also, with deadheading, shading, and fertilizing, I'm able to keep my pansies blooming from April to June most years.
2) Mid to Late June Carryover Plants
'Peter Cottontail' Yarrow:
I love this unusual form of yarrow which lives up to its name. Instead of an umbrella shape, as you would find with regular yarrow, 'Peter Cottontail' yarrow sports circular, cotton-ball-like, white tufts that float over low, mounding foliage. It begins to bloom for me in mid-June and continues through fall if I deadhead it. I grew mine from seed. It's my favorite yarrow.
Mophead and Smooth Hydrangeas:
Need I say more? My mophead hydrangeas (Macrophylla types such as 'Endless Summer') and smooth hydrangeas (arborescence types such as 'Annabelle') command the garden starting in mid to late June. Even though the blooms fade after a few weeks, the flowerheads still look great into fall. With a Cape Cod-style house, I just had to have hydrangeas. These emblems of summer fit in well here.
Early and Mid-Blooming Astilbes:
Astilbes come in early, mid, and late varieties. While my late varieties such as the lovely Astilbe chinensis 'Purpurkerze' variety don't get going until July, my early and mid-blooming astilbes start blooming in late June, helping to fill my late-June gap. To see which astilbes bloom when, see this link. While astilbe plants certainly don’t bloom for 4 to 6+ weeks like many of the other plants on this list, it’s possible to plan a sequence of earlies, mids and lates to extend the overall blooming period. I'm short on moist shade in this garden (my shady spots are almost all bone dry!); otherwise, I'd love to incorporate many more of these beautiful plants.
3) Early August Carryover Plants
These gorgeous plants start blooming for me in early August:
Rose of Sharon:
I have several Rose of Sharon plants in the garden, all in tree form. They are gorgeous, bloom for weeks, and are a magnet for pollinators. When shopping, be sure to choose a sterile variety such as cultivars from Proven Winner's 'Chiffon' series. That way, you won't have to keep pulling unwanted seedlings out of the ground.
Hardy Hibiscus:
Growing up in Florida, I thought hibiscus was exclusively a tropical plant until I encountered hardy hibiscus. They are drop-dead gorgeous with blooms the size of dinner plates! They bloom for me for quite a long time - August through September - and often into October. In addition to hybrids from the 'Summerific' series, I also planted the North American native cultivar (called swamp mallow) in a wet spot right where my sump pump drains. As you might guess from the name, swamp mallows love very wet locations.
Japanese Anemones:
My Japanese anemones float like elegant swans over the late summer garden. The varieties I have tend to bloom from early August (or even late July) until the first frost. I would like to incorporate more into my garden - maybe this fall! Some of the varieties that I bought early on spread a little too aggressively, causing me to remove them. I now know I need to research the cultivar and do my homework before making any purchases.
'Great Blue' Lobelia:
This spiky North American native begins blooming in early August and continues for many weeks through the cusp of fall. It loves a moist but partly sunny location and tolerates clay soils. It reseeds gently and spreads over time if you let it. The pollinators love it and so do I.
Reblooming Roses:
I have many re-blooming roses in this garden that produce a second flush of bloom in early August and continue until fall, including 'Popcorn' (left), 'The Fairy' (middle), and 'Pink Knockout' roses (right).
4) October Carryover Plants
It was a revelation for me to realize that gardening season doesn't have to end in August or September. With fall lasting longer than it used to (18 days longer according to researchers who studied Thoreau's journals), these perennials help me close the season in full color.
'Montauk' Daisies:
I give my 'Montauk' daisies the Chelsea chop at least twice during the season - the third week of May and again in early July. These two trims mean that my plants typically don't bloom until October which is fine with me, as the white blooms light up the garden at a time when many plants are already done for the season.
Coreopsis 'Summer Sunshine':
Coreopsis 'Summer Sunshine' provides valuable color and interest at the end of the season. It blooms for 4-6+ weeks here, lighting up the month of October. Don't take my word for it; here's a write-up from the Mt Cuba coreopsis trials where this cultivar received a top score.
"Coreopsis palustris ‘Summer Sunshine’ was a consistently impressive cultivar year after year. ‘Summer Sunshine’ is one of the few coreopsis that blooms in the fall – its golden flowers with dark cones last about six weeks during September and October. ‘Summer Sunshine’ not only has an amazing fall floral display, but the plant has a dense and sturdy habit as well as disease-resistant foliage. Because it is such a late bloomer, ‘Summer Sunshine’ serves as an important late-season food source for pollinators."
Besides these stunners, asters, re-blooming irises, re-blooming azaleas, re-blooming roses, and dahlias also light up my garden in October.
I hope these tips help you fill the gaps in your garden so you enjoy color all season long. Have you found a favorite plant that carries your garden through a seasonal gap? Let me know in the comments.
Happy gardening,
-Heather
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