Keep smiling: late flowerings chase away the end-of-summer blues!

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Perennials: the promise of lasting beauty

Some generous or late-flowering perennials extend the beautiful season into winter. Many of them continue to bloom once the summer's heat has faded. Their flowering spans from early summer to frost. They return each year, requiring little maintenance and offering a myriad of colours in return. Depending on their size, they will enliven the foreground of beds, fill gaps, or provide structure and lightness. Here is a selection of essential perennials that will bloom until September-October:

• Asters, a must-have for late blooms. These very hardy perennials, like the autumn asters, such as Aster novi-belgii, light up the late season with their starry and colourful blooms! They are covered from August to November with numerous small white, blue, purple, or pink flowers. Melliferous, they attract a multitude of pollinating insects.
• Japanese Anemones, with their delicate star-like flowers, are essential in late summer and autumn beds. These perennials, typical of the "vicar's garden," are among the most beautiful late summer flowers for partial shade, blooming in luminous corollas from September to November. Their delicate beauty contrasts with their robustness, as they can tolerate a variety of soil and light conditions (they accept sun in humus-rich soil).
• Echinaceas, with their vibrant daisy-like flowers, are robust and reliable perennials, offering spectacular blooms in late summer and until September-October without interruption. Fertile, very easy to grow, and accommodating, they bloom in naturalistic beds, borders, and English mixed borders. After flowering, the brown cones suspended on their inflexible stems will extend the decorative effect into the dreary season.
• Perovskias, with their silvery aromatic foliage and lavender-blue flowers, like Perovskia atriplicifolia ‘Blue Spire‘, form a graceful bush blooming from June to September, even until October in Mediterranean climates. This particularly long flowering attracts butterflies, bees, and bumblebees all summer.
• Buenos Aires Verbenas are also beautiful perennials in bloom from summer to autumn. All light and airy, their mauve-blue flower umbels are accompanied by a constant flurry of foraging insects.
• Sedums or Autumn Stonecrops (‘Autumn Joy’, for example) bring colour in early autumn when the garden starts to lack flowers. They bloom from August until November. With their colours ranging from deep to soft or bright, they add much charm to the late season.
• Chrysanthemums are a great way to achieve colour late in the season. They reward us from September to November with their colourful daisy-like flowers beautifully complementing the fiery foliage and last blooms of autumn.

Among other late-flowering perennials, consider Gauras, with their butterfly-like flowers dancing in the breeze, the Heleniums or Autumn Hélénies whose daisy-like flowers come in a wide range of warm tones and truly set the garden ablaze at the end of the season. Also think of Achilleas, Echinops, Phlox paniculata, Anthemis, and ornamental salvias such as the Salvia nemorosa "Blue Bouquetta" Alklf, a variety of perennial sage that offers particularly long and abundant flowering from May to October in an incredible colour, and kniphofias, some varieties of which display their fiery spikes until October (Kniphofia rooperi, ‘Traffic Lights’).

• Discover our collection of late-flowering perennials

Flowering shrubs: a screen of colours until autumn

Summer-flowering shrubs charm us with their colourful blooms and provide structure, texture, and colour to the overall decor. They are essential in sunny or semi-shaded areas, in hedges, beds, as standalone plants, or even in pots on the terrace for smaller varieties. Some are still in bloom at the end of the season, or begin to flower from mid-August to late September, gently announcing the arrival of autumn:

• The Buddleia or Butterfly Bush, whose colourful and fragrant flower spikes irresistibly attract butterflies renew from July to September-October (‘Adonis Blue’, 'Nanho Purple', Pink Panther).
• The Crape Myrtle (Lagerstroemia) or Summer Lilac that bloom in large dense bouquets of frilly flowers often offering a second flowering sometimes until October (‘Souvenir d’André Desmartis’, 'Périgord Pourpre’).
• The Hibiscus syriacus or Garden Althea that rewards us all summer with simple or double delicately crumpled flowers depending on the varieties, ranging from white to purple. They bloom in July, rebloom in August to flower again from late summer to the entrance of autumn (‘Eruption®’, ‘French Cabaret’).
• The classic Hydrangea or Hydrangea macrophylla which, with its large globular inflorescences, ensures a spectacle in late summer, especially as their flowers change colour as they mature. 'Endless Summer’ is part of an extremely remontant series, as it flowers from early summer until October.
• The Lavatera which forms very pretty long-flowering bushes. It produces, from June to September-October, a multitude of lovely satin-like flowers resembling hibiscus flowers, in pink, blue, or white.
• The Siberian Sage or Perovskia that gracefully fits into natural scenes, forming a graceful bush with aromatic silvery foliage and lavender-blue flowers. 'Silvery Blue‘ offers an endless summer bloom of very bright lavender blue.
• Flowering Shrubs are very floriferous shrubs whose flowering extends from May to October depending on the climate. Like Hot Lips’, they are capable of blooming abundantly from late summer to frost.

Among other late-flowering shrubs, we can mention ceanothus, which produce clusters of vibrant blue flowers, spiraeas, whose small delicate flowers attract many pollinating insects, hardy fuchsias (Fuchsia magellanica 'Ricartonii') or the Vitex agnus castus ‘Latifolia’ which adorns itself with violet-blue flower panicles in August-September.

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Summer bulbs: an underground surprise

Designed to colour your beds, borders, and pots until autumn, these buried treasures reveal their late blooms when other plants begin to fade. Among the most beautiful bulb flowers that we can enjoy fully until autumn:

• Dahlias are the champions of long-lasting blooms, from June or July to September or October (until November in temperate climates). Ball Dahlias, giant or dwarf, for beds, decorative, cactus or semi-cactus, or even landscape”, fanciful or sober, exuberant or romantic, these generous summer-flowering bulbs offer an infinite choice for the gardener. They also produce excellent cut flowers. Their brilliant display in late summer and autumn is a reward for the gardener's patience. Be careful, as they are frost-sensitive, they need to be dug up in autumn in cold regions.
• Inca Lilies or Alstroemerias are magnificent vigorous bulbous plants that produce a multitude of stylised, brightly coloured flowers, often brown-striped from June to October. They are suitable for both bouquet making and for decorating beds and pots.
• Gladioli are another bulbous plant that blooms in grand style, from July until September-October, showcasing their long colourful spikes. They accompany vegetables right into the vegetable garden!
• Cannas, with their large tropical leaves and flamboyant flowers, add an exotic and lush note in late summer. They can reach heights of 1.5 to 2 m. We appreciate them for their warm-toned blooms, yellow, orange, or red, as well as for their extremely decorative foliage. Some, like Canna 'Durban', will bloom from July until frost (before being brought indoors for winter).

Finally, do not overlook the Lycoris, also known as red spiders. These bulbs offer a fascinating display with their bare stems emerging from the ground in late summer, followed by exotic trumpet-shaped flowers, Eucomis, and the Crocosmias that bloom in late summer for two months, in fiery colours that pair well with autumn foliage.

• All our summer bulbs

Grasses: the dancers of the ending summer

Grasses are essential plants for any gardener wishing to extend the beauty of their garden beyond summer. Their beauty reveals itself at the end of the season and persists even in winter when their stems dry. Beyond their fine and graphic foliage, grasses are also decorative with their light, fine, or feathery blooms. With their graceful and moving appearance, they can mask deflowered plants and remain decorative even in winter when their spikes are faded. Their airy silhouette and subtle hues harmonise perfectly with the colour palette of late blooms, adding texture and movement to the garden landscape. They are ideal companions for autumn-flowering perennials such as asters, hardy chrysanthemums, and Japanese anemones. Among those that bloom in late summer:

• Pennisetums, or "Fountain Grass," stand out with their remarkably silky spikes, dancing elegantly in the wind. While all bloom until October, some, like Pennisetum alopecuroïdes ‘Hameln’ reserve their broom-shaped spikes in cream-white with brown reflections for the very end of summer, in September-October.
• Miscanthus, or "Chinese Reed", which from August to October rewards us with a rich bloom, pink, red, or silver depending on the varieties, in silky panicles that shimmer under the declining sun. Their foliage, ranging from green to golden, offers a superb contrast with the colourful flowers.
• Don’t forget the “Diamond Grass” (Calamagrostis brachytricha) which is among the most beautiful autumn grasses with its beige spikes tinged with purple that endure even under frost.