Topic: When does your garden look best?

[kentishchloe]

Mine looks great in early spring - Hellebores, snowdrops, early narcissus all over the place making you forget all about horrid, dark winter.
At the moment my Dahlias (Arabian Nights) and 7ft tall Verbena bonariensis are the highlights but I always have at least a few pots on the patio (seen from kitchen window) in full flower - Gentians, Cyclamen hed.,  Pelargoniums & Ceratostigma plumbaginoides are current stars. Happy dance ;D

[Juliet]

Mine looks best in Spring - suspect the original garden had been planted by builders who wanted to sell the house in Spring! - we kept one of the forsythias, the amelanchier, the prunus, one of the kerrias ... we also planted lots of crocus & daffodils, snowdrops, bluebells, leucojum, red & orange stemmed cornus.

The colour drops off a bit in late autumn after the amelanchier's leaves have fallen & the asters have faded & before the cornus' leaves have dropped & the winter heathers & jasmine come out.  What flowers in November?!!

My asters are always very sad and look like they struggle. Ground rich, partially shaded but by next year might have totally gone :-[ Do they need special treatment?

Try moving them into full sun, Icyberjunkie - mine get sun nearly all day - don't think they like partial shade.

[Mrs Ava]

ooo Forsythia.....I don't have one in this garden....must take cuttings from mums!

[beejay]

What flowers in November?!!.

Last year I bought 2 Saxifraga fortunei at an RHS flower show. Not a plant I had come across before but such lovely little flowers. The bright pink one flowered its socks off Oct/Nov, the white one not quite so impressive. This year the pink one, Cherry Pie, is just coming into flower whilst the white one has got masses of buds but not started yet. I was so impressed with them last year that I went up to the RHS show on weds specifically to see what they had & came home with 2 more, both with pale pink flowers, one with bright green leaves & the other with fantastic deep purply leaves. So if you don't mind it small & have a shady spot, these will flower Oct?Nov

[Val]

Spring when everything is fresh and we've had some rain, then we get the arid desert look, now we get the carpet of leaves, then the wonderful explosion of autumn leaf colour, we get the bones in winter and if we're lucky a carpet of snow or frost.I guess from this my least favorite is summer and spring the best.

[Juliet]

Beejay - thanks for that idea, just looked up the white one (hate pink!) & it's really pretty.  Unfortunately the details say lime-free soil & mine is alkaline but I'll put it on the list for when we move.  And in looking it up, I found a page all about plants which are in flower in November, so thanks also for accidentally leading me to that! - I'll have to work through it & see if I can find anything else.

[campanula]

i sort of love my garden most of the year -0 there is always something looking good. Right now, it is a bit of a trollope - all blowsy colours, too much lipstick and cleavage but falling about with no dignity whatsoever             - a bit like me really. Loads of stuff flowering away in a last mad flourish - osteospermums, sphaeralcea, gaillardias, ursinias, arctotis (I have a gravel garden with a kind of African daisy theme - great for long flowering drought resistant planting). Spring always looks lovely but there is a bit of a dreary time round about the end of May after all the tulips have finished, before the roses really get going. In truth, I am trying to get away from the traditional herbaceous border thing but am not keen on the currently fashionable 'prairie' planting. I like one or two grasses but some friends of mine have a grass border which I think is unutterably dull. My favourite family is the compositae with mallows (alcea, callirhoes, sidalcea etc. coming close). Late summer looks fabulous with the low golden autumn sun glowing through the stipa and arctotis, heleniums and rudbeckias, heliopsis, asters and osteospermums - and the escholzia always have a second wind with cornflowers and calendula. Mostly, I love the thought of a winter rest and tend to leave the garden to be rampant and wanton with a touch of the faded actress about it.

[Obelixx]

Have you tried irises and scabious to get you through May?   They would do well in your dry gravelly stuff.  The rest sounds luscious.

[BAGGY]

My garden looked best by accident this year.  There was a scrappy old bed in full sun that housed a flag iris (I think - purple) and I just shook calendular,californian poppies, poached egg plant and poppy seeds on and it all happened at the right time along witha lovely dark stripey wallflower.  Not planned but the colours were really spicey and smelled fab.