Late summer. My garden is full of Dahlias, Sunflowers and Rudbeckias. Courgettes in the greenhouse have made a run for the roof trusses, and the tomatoes are ripening.

Every year I like to try out new planting ideas and colour combinations by propagating from seed and cuttings. New additions this year included Helechrysum Salmon Rose and Rudbeckia Chim Chiminee.

  • Helechrysum Salmon Rose
  • Rudbeckia Chim Chiminee

At pricking out stage this year, I decided to combine the young seedlings into mixed batches, as I wanted to create repeat blocks of planting through the borders to join it together. This didn’t quite work out as I had planned…

The success rate of this has been variable. I need to learn to match seedlings that can compete with each other. I found the Verbena bonariensis was crowded out when mixed with the Tithonia, and the same can be said for the Daucus carota. Next year I will need to remember to prick out and grown these on as clumps of single cultivars prior to being planted out. Sadly, I think the chrysanthemum met its match with slugs.

This is my garden, I would describe it as small, as it comes in at around eighty square metres. There is a seating area, which provides views right through the garden, and a narrow pathway leads from the greenhouse to the front door. The rest is planting. I take a long stroll through my small but densely packed garden several times a day, checking out the flowers, buds, and seed heads. I openly admit to enjoying the tight flower buds, unfurling petals, and seed pod formation just as much as the flowering period. Watching a plant grow from seed is fascinating.

If you are unsure on how to design your garden space, I recommend a late summer visit to Trentham Gardens in Staffordshire. The landscape design and planting by Piet Oudolf, Professor Nigel Dunnett and Tom Stuart Smith will provide countless ideas of inspirational planting and design.

  • Piet Oudolf
  • Nigel Dunnett
  • Piet Oudolf
  • Nigel Dunnett
  • Piet Oudolf
  • Tom Stuart-Smith
  • Tom Stuart-Smith
  • Tom Stuart-Smith

A visit to Trentham gardens in Staffordhire always gets me thinking about new planting ideas… I now know Sanguisorbia will be planted, and tall slim stemmed perennials will weave their way through my garden. I have yet to research the cultivars, but I know an excellent nursery that will be able to help.http://www.wildegoosenursery.co.uk

I was particularly taken by Nigel Dunnetts’s vibrant annual meadow mix around the lake at Trentham. I find the predominant use of a single colour en masse looks stunning in a large landscape, however I am not quite so sure it would work to quite the same effect in a garden of a similar size to mine, it might just be too much for the eye to cope with.

The reason I have thought to mention this, is due to a particularly successful and bountiful year with sunflowers. Rather than expressing my great joy, I am now finding the yellow quite harsh, and I’m not visually enjoying them as much as I thought I would. 0n a plus note, the deep brown and burnt orange cultivars are stunning, they have blended so well with many of my annuals, and have created a cohesive colour range.

Do you have a plant in your garden that continually stops you in your tracks? As of yet I am unable to make a final decision, as there are several in the running at the moment.

Do you have a favourite perennial, hardy annual or grass that stops you in your tracks ? Let me know, I would be fascinated to hear why.