With June comes the summer solstice and beautiful long evenings. The warmer days trigger a dazzling array of plants into flower, from roses and shrubs to perennials and summer annuals, they all bring the garden to a sparkling crescendo.
Achillea 'Terracotta' is a good perennial to grow for summer colour. This cultivar has fine, silvery green, feathery basal foliage and it then produces strong flowering stems to 4ft with heads of flat, dark orange flowers that gradually fade to cream after opening. As the flowers fade the seed heads look attractive and provide fine structure to a border later in the summer. Achillea prefers to be grown in a well-drained soil, in full sun and they resent winter wet.
Eschscholzia californica, or the Californian Poppy is a great annual for dazzling summer colour with its bright and vivid orange flowers opening through June. Many different selections are now available, from cream to maroon as well as the fantastic orange shades. This is a great plant to grow in a hot sunny border, where the soil is gravelly and well drained. After flowering it will set seed and naturalise between the permanent planting, producing rivers of silver foliage which contrast so wonderfully with its bright flowers.
Sanguisorba is an adaptable perennial and Sanguisorba officinalis 'Arnhem' is a tall cultivar suitable for a mixed border where it provides height or in an informal naturalistic scheme where it mixes well with other perennials and grasses. Through early summer it produces thin, airy stems, reaching about 6ft with small, egg-shaped maroon red flowers borne at the stem tips. It is easy to grow in fertile well drained soil, in a sunny position.
Rosa 'Winchester Cathedral' is at its best through June. This variety is an English Rose that produces a pure white flower with a delicate fragrance. Its flower structure resembles that of an ‘old rose’ with many fine petals making up the flower head and it will repeat flower until the first frosts in October. English Roses have a branching growth habit and will make a bigger plant than a hybrid tea rose, so are suited to planting in a mixed planting or shrub border where they will give extra height and structure.
Climbing and rambling roses like Rosa 'Rambling Rector' can be used in many different ways in the garden and this cultivar is one of the most vigorous and floriferous. Through June the stems are covered in heads of small white flowers that appear to smoother the plant and these are followed by beautiful red hips in the autumn. This variety can be trained over a trellis or pergola, along a fence or grown up an established tree, but because it is vigorous it needs space to develop.
Salvias are a large group of plants ranging from perennials over 6ft tall to small annuals for the front of a border. Salvia x sylvestris 'Mainacht' is a small perennial, reaching around 3ft, that is easy to grow in a sunny position and well-drained soil. It is also one of the best cultivars for its intense dark purple flowers which are borne on small branching flowering stems; it also bears dark green, wrinkled basal leaves.