Johannesburg – With months of outdoor living still to be enjoyed, now is the time to take stock of your garden plantings and make it as pretty as a picture. The warm weather is an ideal time for planting because this is the time when plants grow best. Here are some ideas to inspire you.
Carpets of colour
Sweetly-scented alyssum always delight. Grow in a sunny position from seedlings for quick results. Let their white and lavender flowers carpet the ground as edgings along pathways and the front of borders, and spill from containers.
Brighten rockeries, gravel gardens and spaces in between paving stones with single and double portulaca (moss rose) in colours of cream, mango, fuchsia, orange, peach and peppermint. Verbenas, with flowers of pink, scarlet and purple, are useful for growing on slopes, as a ground-cover along driveways, or spilling out of containers. These annuals need sunshine and good air circulation.
Bedding begonias have a fibrous root system, white, pink or red flo-wers, and bronze or green leaves. Plant a broad ribbon in the morning sun or semi-shade in rich well-drained soil.
Annuals for bedding
Marigolds are the answer to long-lasting summer colour, showing off their sunshine colours of cream, butter-yellow, burnished gold, vibrant orange and deepest coppery-red. Flower size and shape varies from tiny flowers with few petals – ideal for edgings, bedding, rockery pocket-sand containers – to full-rounded blooms with crinkly petals for the middle or back of the border. Com-post-enriched soil, a sunny aspect, deep weekly watering and regular dead-heading will ensure a long and eye-catching display.
Sun-loving annual salvias are excellent for summer bedding. They are splendid massed, in borders and in containers. Select seedlings in col-ours that suit your garden, scarlet and red for effect and cream, salmon, burgundy and lavender for a gentler colour scheme.
Vincas cope well in the hottest weather and are not only pretty in beds, they also make attractive con-tainer subjects. They have a compact, branching growth habit and large flowers with round petals in white, blush, pink, apricot, lilac and grape, often with a contrasting centre.
Zinnias in bright colours of pink, primrose, gold, red and purple also enjoy full sun. They range from tall varieties for borders to dwarf Thum-belinas with dainty flowers of white, gold and orange that are ideal for spilling over low walls and containers.
Nicotianas are reliable, weather-resistant annuals for sun or partial shade. They have white, pink, red, purple or lime-green funnel-shaped flowers. In the landscape they are useful in mass plantings, in mixed borders and in containers.
Annuals for height
Sunflowers now come in cream, lemon, gold, bronze, russet and maroon-red. Sow the lar-ge seeds about 3cm below the surface of the soil and 30cm apart. Giant sunflowers can grow 3m tall and make useful quick-growing temporary screens at the back of beds. Sunflowers of medium height are a better choice for the ave-rage home garden with dwarf sunflo-wers more in scale in town gardens.
Cleome, known as the spider plant because of the shape of the stamens and narrow flower petals of white and lavender-pinkis an ele-gant choice for the back of a border. Cleome “sparkler” is more compact. The cup-shaped pink and white flo-wers of lavatera contrast well with the flowers of cleome.
Perennials and shrubs
Two useful and reliable perennials for the summer months are day lilies and alstroemerias.
Plant in large groups in single colours for effect or in a rainbow of mixed shades. Alstroemerias, Princess Series, are compact and useful for the front of borders.
Butterflies are attracted to dai-sies, and the summer garden has a wonderful selection of these bright cheerful flowers,including yellow, orange, pink and multi-coloured gazanias, single and double Marguerite daisies in white, pink and yellow and indigenous blue felicia.
Hydrangeas can be depended on to produce a long-lasting display of white, pink, blue and lavender flo-wers throughout summer. Lacecap-phydrangeas have dainty flattish heads of fertile flowers surrounded by a ring of ray-florets. Grow hydra-ngeas in rich moist soil in dappled or filtered shade.
Indigenous Leonotis Leonurushas orange, apricot or cream tubular flowers arranged in circular whorls up the stems.
Grow this drought resistant, upright shrub in full or part sun where it will be visited by bees, butterflies and birds. Pink, mallow Anisodontea scabrosa is a rewarding indigenous shrub with a height and spread of 1.5m with dainty pink flowers from early spring into autumn. This fast-growing evergreen shrub grows in sun.
Saturday Star