As much as I love spring ephemerals, July’s lilium, and other flash-in-the-pan, prettyboy plants, at this time I take a good, hard look around and pay homage to those stalwarts that are still going strong in early fall. It’s also when I make decisions about which perennials no longer deserve the many, many chances I’ve given them. Both lists are somewhat short, because I also have a lot of cultivars that aren’t all that exciting, but do their jobs. I would never pull them out, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to celebrate them either. Here are some that richly deserve their garden space.
Hydrangea paniculata ‘Limelight’
This gets quite spectacular by summers end and is a great cut flower which dries easily in the vase. (Normally, I would include my old-fashioned macrophyllas here as well, but their buds didn’t make it through the winter. I’ll have to go back to banking them with bags of leaves.)
David Austen shrub rose Darcey Bussell
This flowers freely from May through frost, is completely disease-free and thrives with no care whatsoever. I keep in an obscure location that happens to have full sun, and only get to it once in a while when I need flowers. Of course, it’s gigantic, far beyond the “compact form” promised, but that’s OK.
Hakonechloa ‘Aurole’
At least I think it’s the ‘Aureole.” I have this in several spots, but it looks best next to the pond, where it provides texture and color contrast with a big rodgersia and a dicentra. The big gold mound looks just as good in May as it does in November.
Some annuals: tall ageratum, lobuleria, white tuberous begonias
I never understood why anyone bought ageratum until I see-starting friend starting giving me this tall, graceful variety. Lobuleria have a honey scent, become very full, and are impervious through a hard freeze. I get confused about begonias, but these white ones provide bright flowers in my front shade garden and don’t seem to mind drought. I also grow their dramatic dragon wing brethren in pots; these have huge double blooms.
By November, I’ll be loving anything that’s still showing some kind of color, but by then it’s almost time for bulb forcing.
End-of-season stars originally appeared on Garden Rant on October 6, 2015.