Daffodils, tulips, iris, peonies, roses, and daylilies keep drama in the garden until early July. Sooo ... for August and September what are your favorite garden drama queens?

If I have converted the seasons correctly, that's the end of summer and the start of autumn/fall. My hero in the garden is Justicia carnea. I also have a late flowering agapanthus guilfoyle and kniphofia rooperi which look beautiful together.

Robin,

The Brazilian Plum is amazing. I have agapanthus in my garden. They did not bloom last year although their foliage was gorgeous. I am hoping they will bloom this year. If they do, they will be one of the prima donnas in the garden.

I like to use Dahlias for late summer/early autumn colours.

These are my favorites:

Café au Lait


Creme de Cassis


Multi Dahlia shots:

The downside with Dahlia is that they need to be lifted each fall and kept in a frost free place over winter. I like to keep mine in pots to make lifting and planting out easier.

Mary, because I rarely offer supplemental water and we don't get a lot of rain in the summer, August in my yard is pretty brown and crunchy. I am looking forward to photographs of others' blooms, though.

Lili,

I love dahlias and have planted several in the garden. The problem is they need staking. I just do not like seeing stakes in the garden.

Another advantage of growing them in pots - they rarely need staking unless you over-fertilise them.

Like Debra, there are many beautiful things that I want to grow but they just cannot stand the extremes of or seasonal weather. Agapanthus is one of these. I have always wanted to grow them and have tried a few times.... all to no avail. And the Dahlias are gorgeous but have to be dug and stored in the autumn and replanted the next spring. So I rely on various sizes and colors of southern shrubs, such as Crepe Myrtles, and native plants and herbs. And of course I plant a lot of annuals for color all season long. But, again like Debra, I love your garden photographs.

IrisLilli said:Another advantage of growing them in pots - they rarely need staking unless you over-fertilise them.

Just curious. Why would dahlias not need staking in pots but need staking in the garden. S

Well, I can only speak for myself of course, but my Dahlias are smaller when grown in pots. I'm thinking it's because their roots are constricted and I am careful with the fertiliser, because I want blooms and not just lots of foliage.

[Edited to add: Where I live, you can buy small Dahlias especially for growing in pots. I would think that you can in the US too?]

Yes, you can get those small bedding sorts of dahlias here too. There are some very nice ones available. But you had better be prepared to snail bait and/or snail patrol like crazy.

My problem with dahlias is that our soil is really dense clay, so I've lost dahlias to winter rot or something. At the moment, I have one surviving dahlia which is just beginning to come above ground - 'Bishop of Leicester'.



I don't want to grow dahlias in pots - I'd need huge pots, and I have enough pots to manage as it is.

For late September into October I like Chrysanthemums. Unfortunately, I discovered that the rabbits like them too; they ate most of those that I had in the ground. (I still have one small white-flowered one in the Moon Garden (which might be 'Snowtime)'; I don't know why they didn't find (and eat) that one. ) So now I am forced to grow them in pots (both the large "florist" kinds and even the smaller NOID ones you can get at your local nursery or hardware store garden center). During my brief time being a member of the local Chrysanthemum Society/club (brief because our interests were not the same - they are about shows, I am about color for my garden), I picked up a bit of information on growing the larger mums. Right now I have 3 survivors from last fall, 9 purchased cuttings I just potted up, and come the local club sale (early June?) I will pick up a few more cuttings. That is in addition to the small Moon Garden plant, and two surviving NOIDs from the hardware store. Growing them in pots is a pain, but at least they give me fall color.

In my garden mums spread like crazy and become a 'weeding' chore. Nothing eats them because rabbits are eaten by bigger predators here.

Small dahlias do not work for me. The snails totally destroy them. I guess cannas are pretty dramatic, but everyone around here myself included has leaf curl, so we have flowers and ugly foliage. I am not sure they are worth the trouble.

One of my favorite August/September bloom is the Cardinal Flower/Giant Lobelia . It is a perennial, and feeds hummingbirds. I love more than petunias for late summer blooms. They grow and bloom better here. Last year I dug up my first Dahlias, hopefully they are okay when it comes to storage here.
A late summer bloom I would love to try is Surprise lilies with their showy beauty.

Niki,

Here we call surprise lilies "naked ladies." They are pretty.

The fall 'surprise lilies or spider lilies' as we call them, are the red ones. The naked ladies, what we call the bigger pink ones, bloom here beginning the last week of July. They are trying to take over and last week I dug a bunch to dry.

Niki, remind me and I will send you some Surprise lilies, I've heard them called naked ladies, resurrection lilies, or hardy amaryllis. I have too many of them.

Thank you, Tom! Hurray

A no-nonsense late bloomer here is Sedum/Hylotelephium telephium, which also have decorative seed heads in winter.




They need full sun unless you want to stake them. Another option is to give them the old 'Chelsea Chop' in May, which makes them bloom later and shorter.

Love the Raspberry Truffle Lilli.