Plant Solutions

Soil preference: Free-draining

Aspect: Sun

Season of interest: Summer

Height and spread: 1.5m × 30cm (5ft × 1ft)

Companion plants: Best when sited to create a focal point, perhaps in gravel, where it can set off sedges and grasses. Smaller species such as Dierama dracomontanum also make interesting companions.

Galtonia candicans

Summer Hyacinth Marginally hardy bulb

Bold, strap-like leaves surround a big, rigid stem whose top third, in summer, is furnished with bell-shaped waxy white flowers. These are held well away from the stem and hang downwards gracefully. Gently fragrant and a relatively free self-seeder.

Soil preference: Any free-draining

Aspect: Sun

Season of interest: Summer

Height and spread: 1m × 30cm (3ft 3in × 1ft)

Companion plants: A good plant to distribute among old fashioned roses or to include with a cool colour scheme of anchusas, campanulas and Anaphalis.

Gladiolus hybrids

Tender, corm-bearing perennials

Large group of frost tender, corm-bearing plants derived mainly from South African species, with flat, ribbed, swords-haped leaves and tall spikes bearing showy, open-throated blooms with flared tepals in mainly vivid colours through purples, pinks, reds, oranges, and yellows to lime green and white. Many are bicolours. ‘Grandiflorus’ kinds have the largest blooms; ‘Primulinus’ have narrower leaves and hooded flowers and ‘Nanus’ types are dwarf.

Soil preference: Free-draining

Aspect: Sun

Season of interest: Summer

Height and spread: Variable to 1m × 30cm (3ft 3in × 1ft)

Companion plants: Developed largely as competition blooms or cut flowers. Larger varieties are hard to place in mixed plantings; newer smaller kinds make attractive groups in a late summer border, among hybrid dahlias, perennial asters or taller phloxes.

Agapanthus (deciduous hybrids)

African Lily, Nile Lily Tender or marginally hardy bulb-bearing perennials

Deep green, shiny, strap-shaped leaves form dense clumps among which, in late summer, tall stems emerge, bearing at their tips short-stalked umbels of many six-petalled flowers in shades of blue or white. Varieties, whose leaves die right down in winter. Free-flowering kinds include the deep blue ‘Midnight Star’, ‘Jack’s Blue’, and ‘Loch Hope’ and ‘Bressingham White’.

Soil preference: Any well-drained

Aspect: Sun

Season of interest: Summer

Height and spread: Up to 1.2m × 75cm (4ft × 2ft 6in)

Companion plants: Good in containers, or in mixed herbaceous plantings among such late summer flowers as phloxes and asters, or to contrast with hot-coloured daisies such as rudbeckias, heleniums or coreopsis.

Bulbs for autumn

Colchicum speciosum

Autumn Crocus, Naked Ladies, Naked Boys Hardy bulb

Crocus-shaped flowers emerge directly from the ground at the end of summer, disappearing completely after blooming. In spring, glossy foliage appears and forms a bold clump, with seed heads carried at the base of the leaf. Flower colours are typically lilac or mauve, with pale petal bases, but C. speciosum ‘Album’ has soft white flowers.

Soil preference: Any free-draining

Aspect: Sun or part shade

Season of interest: Late summer, early autumn

Height and spread: Flowers to 20cm (8in), foliage 45cm (1ft 6in)

Companion plants: One to site where the coarse spring leaves will not be troublesome. Lovely naturalized in grass or in a border with softly coloured late perennials including aster and Sedum spectabile and dainty flowered hardy fuchsias.

Amaryllis belladonna

Belladonna Lily, Jersey Lily Near hardy bulb

Thick stems emerge naked from the ground in early autumn rapidly extending until the plump buds at their ends have opened to reveal a cluster of large pink flowers with white centres. The strap-like leaves follow in spring and summer. Bulbs flower best when congested and when baked in summer sun.

Soil preference: Free-draining

Aspect: Sun, very hot and dry

Season of interest: Autumn

Height and spread: 60cm × 15cm (2ft × 6in)

Companion plants: The flowers come as a delightful surprise, in autumn and are beautiful among Mediterranean shrubs such as French lavenders and silver, feathery artemisias.

Crocus speciosus

True Autumn Crocus Hardy corm-bearing perennial

Slender, wineglass-shaped flowers emerge, without foliage, in autumn, followed, in late winter, by the grassy leaves. The violet blue flowers are marked with darker pencil veining and have showy, orange stigmas. Slow to establish but superb in large numbers.

Soil preference: Any free-draining