Continually Blooming flowers to ensure your garden remains vibrant year-round
Gardening in the UK: A Guide to Year-Round Colour and Interest
For a UK garden that looks good all year with continuous colour, a combination of flowering perennials, evergreen shrubs, and plants with interesting foliage or bark is essential. Here are some of the best options to achieve year-round interest and continuous colour:
- Hellebores: Known as the “queen” of early spring bloomers, these plants thrive in shade to part shade and rich soil. They offer delicate flowers in various colours, making them a great choice for adding a touch of elegance to your garden in the early months of the year.
- Repeat-flowering roses: Provide flowers across several months, especially in summer. Roses are a classic choice for any garden and their repeat-flowering varieties ensure that your garden stays vibrant even during the warmer months.
- Salvia, geums, lavender, dahlias, hydrangeas, hardy geraniums, Mexican fleabane: These plants flower all summer, offering vibrant and long-lasting colour. They are perfect for adding a burst of brightness to your garden during the summer months.
- Russian Sage (Perovskia atriplicifolia): A hardy perennial blooming midsummer for 10+ weeks with blue flowers, it's a great addition for summer drought and back borders.
- ‘Walker’s Low’ Catmint (Nepeta x faassenii): Provides up to 5 months of lavender-blue flowers. It's also an RHS Award of Garden Merit winner, making it a reliable and attractive choice for your garden.
- Evergreen shrubs like Sarcococca (Christmas box): Provide fragrance and greenery during winter months, blooming creamy white flowers in part shade.
- Dogwoods (Cornus spp.): Known for striking winter bark colours, they add winter interest to your garden.
- Hydrangea paniculata ‘Limelight’: Offers fresh, zingy colour that does well even in shady spots.
- Evergreens such as ivy and foliage plants: Keep the garden looking lush and colourful through winter by adding texture and shades of green.
To maintain continuous colour all year, it’s best to layer these plants. Combining early spring bloomers like hellebores and sarcococca, summer bloomers like lavender and dahlias, autumn-flowering plants, and winter-interest plants providing bark or berries ensures something is always in flower or visually attractive, rather than relying on a single plant to flower nonstop, which is not possible outdoors in the UK climate.
Using these suggestions will give your garden colour and interest through every season while minimizing maintenance thanks to some hardy, award-winning, and low-maintenance choices.
For those looking for something different, consider plants like the Tibetan cherry blossom and Prunus serrula, which offer winter-interest, spring blossom, and autumn colour. Ornamental grasses like Stipa move beautifully in the breeze and look fabulous frosted in winter. Rosa 'Flower Carpet Cherry' is a repeat-flowering rose that can keep blooming until November or December in a sheltered spot.
Dahlias are famed for blooming all summer long, while dogwoods are stars of the winter garden and can be combined with summer-flowering perennials, evergreen grasses, and foliage plants for four-season interest. Violas and cyclamen are recommended for filling gaps and brightening up pots in early spring.
Finally, don't forget about plants like Lesser periwinkle, Salvia, geums, and Erigeron karvinskianus, which can provide six to eight months of continuous blooming if deadheaded. Cyclamen and viola cornuta (horned violets) are also great choices for adding a pop of colour to your garden. These plants can be found on Crocus, making them easily accessible for gardeners across the UK.
- Hellebores and Sarcococca, evergreen shrubs, offer beauty in early spring and winter, respectively, enriching your garden with constant fragrance and greenery.
- Planting evergreens like ivy, Stipa (ornamental grass), and various foliage plants add year-round lushness and color to your garden, especially during the winter months.
- To ensure continuous color in your home-and-garden, consider layering plants like repeat-flowering roses, Russian Sage, 'Walker's Low' Catmint, and Dahlias, which bloom across different seasons.
- For a unique lifestyle blend of year-round beauty, health, and wellness, consider incorporating plants like Tibetan cherry blossom, Prunus serrula, Rosa 'Flower Carpet Cherry', and cyclamen, offering various seasonal surprises in your UK garden.
