Eight plants that flower all summer
Fill your garden with colour all summer long with these long-flowering plants.
A reliable selection of long-flowering plants is essential to ensuring your garden looks its best throughout summer.
With these planted, you'll also save yourself time on replacing plants with shorter flowering seasons. However, flowering for an extended period of time can be energy-expensive for plants, so on top of deadheading to promote flowering, keep them watered and fed with a potash-rich feed, such as tomato fertiliser.
If you're going on holiday or don't have lots of time to spend watering, consider investing in an automatic watering system such as a drip irrigation kit.
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Discover some of the best plants that will flower all summer, below.
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Pelargoniums
With regular deadheading, these easy-to-grow perennials will provide beautiful blooms throughout summer. There are many pelargonium types to grow – find out more in our feature on pelargonium types explained.
Erigeron
Erigeron karvinskianus is a spreading, perennial daisy with an informal growth habit, ideal for planting in the crevices of walls, steps and paving stones. It'll often flower well into autumn, too. Good for a well-drained spot in full sun or partial shade.
Abutilons
If you can provide them with some form of winter protection from frosts, abutilons will prove their worth with year-round flowers. Give them a sunny position, with plenty of water and feeding to get the best from them. Pictured is the trailing abutilon, Abutilon megapotamicum.
Campanulas
For flowers all summer, try the creeping campanulas like Campanula portenschlagiana and Campanula poscharskyana. Like Erigeron karvinskianus, they're ideal for growing in cracks and crevices. The flowers are popular with pollinators.
Iberis sempervirens
Commonly known as candytuft, this perennial, low-growing plant is a brilliant ground cover choice for the front of borders or in containers. It'll provide clouds of frothy blooms from spring to autumn.
Potentilla
Potentillas are compact shrubs and herbaceous perennials, well-suited to growing as floral hedges or growing in well-drained herbaceous borders. Potentillas respond well to deadheading, which will provide you with the best display. Pictured is the beautiful hybrid Potentilla x hopwoodiana.
Sweet peas
These popular annuals can begin flowering as early as May. When deadheaded, or if the flowers are snipped just before opening for cut sweet peas, you'll easily have flowers throughout summer and into autumn. Follow the growing advice in our sweet pea grow guide.
Perennial wallflowers
Perennial wallflowers like 'Bowles's Mauve' and 'Apricot Delight' not only flower throughout summer, but have even been known to flower all year. Just make sure you deadhead spent flower spikes to encourage plants to produce more.
More plants for flowers all summer
- Fremontodendron
- Verbena bonariensis
- Geranium 'Rozanne'
- Salvia microphylla
- Coreopsis
- Penstemons
- Nepeta x faassenii