Looking Good in July

July. Equidistant from late spring and early autumn, featuring long days, school holidays and barbecue extravaganza weather. July is definitely ‘proper summer’ in the UK.

This July has been even more categorically summertime than normal, there’s been no rain worth mentioning (at least not around here), and hot days. So it’s useful to look around and take note of those plants that are still managing to look presentable.

Full disclosure: I snapped these piccies before the UK had it’s record breaking high temperatures. I have cast my eye over the garden and the things mentioned here are still looking pretty good at time of writing.

First up is the glamorous Tree Poppy, Romneya coulteri. The plant in my garden is about two metres tall, and establishing well after only a couple of years. Properly established clumps of Romneya are wonderful things, covered in these huge fried egg flowers, each one the size of your hand. This is a plant that is not bothered by drought or heat, it’s not exactly something you see everywhere, maybe it’ll be more widely planted in the future?

Anemanthele lessoniana is sometimes called Pheasant Tail Grass, presumably to highlight how little it resembles the tail of a pheasant. It’s a nice reliable evergreen grass, also very drought tolerant (bit of a theme developing here), and generally unfussy. Unlike many grasses it does not demand bright sun, which makes it very useful as a softening filler plant in tricky spots. The plant shown here is maybe 90 cm across, and just coming into flower. It will self seed, but not to a pestilential degree, and the seedlings are easily potted up and grown on, which is how I got the plant shown here.

Back to some real flower power. This is Lythrum virgatum, a cousin of the UK native Purple Loostrife. Various cultivars of this plant exist, and I originally had one of these, that plant has long since been replaced by self sown progeny, so I don’t feel I can offer a variety name here. Unlike the Romneya and the Anemanthele, this is not a plant you could call “drought tolerant”, it does like a bit of moisture. That being said, it can and will grow cheerfully in decent garden soil, it’s not an obligatory bog garden plant by any means. As you can see from the picture, it’s also very popular with the bees!

This is a plant that’s been around forever, Crocosmia 'Lucifer', a proper stalwart of the summer garden. in the right setting these flowers (held about a metre off the ground) can look amazingly exotic. Conversely, it also looks right at home in traditional cottage garden settings. In my experience you may need to stake the flower stems, but not every time. That small amount of effort is well worth while to help preserve these amazing flowers, one of the best reds you will find in the perennial garden.

The final entrant in the July beauty pageant is decidedly shrubby. Sometimes called the Angelica Tree (a reasonably accurate common name), Aralia elata is a plant whose main contribution is foliage. Big foliage. Also spikes. This combo may not be your thing, but if you like biggish leafyish things it’s a winner. In the right conditions, it will put on a fairly good display of autumn colour (so fingers crossed this hot summer has done the trick), before the leaves drop. After leaf fall you’re left with a collection of spine studded stems, which leads to its other common name of “Devils’ Walking Stick”.

That concludes this round up of July highlights. The hot dry weather seems to be continuing, so if you decide to add any of these stars to your own garden it would be wise to hold off planting until autumn time. Of course, such caution does not preclude a little light plant shopping. Happy gardening!

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