Summer Spruce Up

Summer is my least favorite season.  It's hot and it's very, very dry.  Many of my plants shut down or go into hiding.  Gaps develop in spots throughout the garden.  I hesitate to fill them as new plants need more water and, with California's request to reduce water consumption by 15 percent, there's too little to go around.  Try as I can to shut my eyes and wait out summer, hoping for rain in the fall, I usually break down and do at least some planting.  I consider succulents fair game but this year I've gone a bit off the rails.

The bed in the foreground here was driving me crazy.  This photo was taken at the end of June.  The white-flowered Argyranthemum looked worse with every passing day thereafter and all the filler plants around them did too.  I considered planting the whole area in succulents but fell prey to a pretty face in the form of a new-to-me Echibeckia.

I brought home the Echibeckia, an intergeneric hybrid of Echinacea and Rudbeckia, and purchased inexpensive 6-packs of other plants to fill in the area around it.  The coleus was labeled as suitable for sun or shade and, although I feared I'd been sold a bill of goods on their sun tolerance, I planted them anyway.

Clockwise from the upper left, the plants I used included Echibeckia 'Summerina Orange', Dymondia margaretae, Gazania 'Tiger Stripe Mix', and Plectranthus scuttelariodes 'Rustic Orange' (aka coleus)

Deciding that the coleus wasn't going to branch out unless I cut it back, I did just that.  Now the area looks scruffy again but I'm hoping the coleus bounces back quickly.

The coleus stems I cut were trimmed down and put in water to root.  If the plants in the ground die due to exposure to full sun, at least I should have some rooted cuttings to plant elsewhere (in the shade).

I've added some small plants here and there to fill gaps in other beds too but this week I focused on sprucing up selected containers.

Actually, I augmented this half barrel in early June, filling in a gap left when I pulled out rust-encrusted snapdragons with a Dahlia 'Waltzing Matilda' tuber purchased during a last-chance sale and a strawflower seedling (Xerochrysum bracteatum) given to me by Denise of A Growing Obsession

Even through the dahlia isn't blooming yet, I love the look of the barrel.  The yellow and orange Lantana has been in the barrel for at least 2 years now but I cut it back hard in June and it's looking great again.

There had been pansies and a yellow Argyranthemum in this pot with the dark blue Scaevola.  I pulled the dead pansies, cut back the Scaevola, and replaced the Argyranthemum with Helianthus 'Choco Sun', a dwarf sunflower.  Argyranthemum will come back here but it doesn't look at all good in its off season.

Earlier this week I read a post by Margaret at The Gardening Me about refreshing her front door pots and decided I really should do something about the two largest pots by my own front door, both of which were looking truly awful.

It didn't help that I haven't been watering these pots enough.  The pansies and Bacopa were dead and the shrubs, Prostanthera ovalifolia 'Variegata' and Boronia 'Shark's Bay', were looking sad.  I left the shrubs but I may yet pull the Boronias as they've been disappointing.

I filled in with two groundcover plants at the base.  As I'd allowed the soil in the pot to dry out more than I should have, I used a wetting agent (surfactant) when I watered.  It seems to have helped.

The groundcover plants I used were Calibrachoa 'Double Lemon' (top) and Scaevola 'Bondi Blue' (bottom)

I haven't entirely ignored succulents this summer.  I filled two new containers, one of which I inserted in a garden bed to fill a hole.

I booted the plant that had been in this pot and popped in my new Mangave 'Night Owl'

Another recent purchase, bromeliad Orthophytum 'Gerkenii', went into an empty pot I had tucked behind our garage.  It's new home is my lath (shade) house.

Do you plant during the summer months, or wait until temperatures are cooler?

All material © 2012-2021 by Kris Peterson for Late to the Garden Party