Late Summer/Autumn Colour || Extending Flowering Season

Hello everyone, Jeanette here again from Enthusiastic Gardener. Thank you for joining me. It rained all day long yesterday, so I couldn't get outside. Actually, it turned out to be a good thing that I couldn't get out to plant, which I will tell you about in a moment. We have a croaky voice this morning. Let's talk about these two. I'm trying to get, as I said before, some late summer, early autumn colour into the garden. And I found these two. I don't know where my voice has gone today, but anyway, very husky. This is a beautiful Echinacea, and it's just absolutely gorgeous. Look at that delicious candy, this particular variety, and it has beautiful cone flower. It's great for cup flowers, and the stems are very, very sturdy. They're not going to flop over at all, so it's ideal for flower arrangements. It likes full sun. It's perennial, so the leaves will all die back at the end of the autumn, and then they will come back again next year. It will flower from June all the way to the first frost, so that's going to provide some gorgeous late summer colour. Now, of course, you may know Echinacea has a lot of medicinal health qualities. As you know, Echinacea comes in vitamin form. The Greek word for Echinacea is actually sea urchin or hedgehog. You can deadhead the flowers for more flowers to grow, but if you leave the cones on, it will also provide lots of winter interest as well. This is a Phlox, a beautiful Phlox. The famous purple can get much taller ones than this. This is quite compact and bushy, this version, so this one is going to grow 16 to 18 inches tall and wide. It also likes full sun. It can do partial shade as well. It will flower all summer long, and we have a lot of new shoots. This is going to carry on flowering for a very, very long time. You can divide them as well in the spring to create more plants. It's a perennial, so it will die down. And this one has a Greek word as well, and the Greek word for Phlox is flame. Now I'm going to show you where I'm going to plant them, and it's funny because I was going to plant the Echinacea in one particular spot, which was right in front of my new Hibiscus Rose of Sharon, but then the Rose of Sharon bloomed yesterday, and funnily enough it's a very, very similar color to this. Let me show you. So this is where I was going to put my Echinacea. I was going to put it here, but you can see from this that the color of the Hibiscus or the Rose of Sharon is so similar to the Echinacea that if I'd have planted it yesterday I wouldn't have realized because the Hibiscus hadn't bloomed, and now it has. I realize I don't want these two together because they are so similar. So I think one detracts from the other. It doesn't enhance. So I'm glad that it rained yesterday so I couldn't plant it. So I think I'm going to put the Phlox here rather than the Echinacea because I think that they complement each other, the colors, rather than being exactly the same, which this would have been. Anyway, so that's where the Phlox is going, and I will show you where the Echinacea is now going. The Echinacea likes full sun and I have the perfect place for it. So I'm going to put the Echinacea over here, just about here, which I think is going to add a lovely bit of color, over to this side and balance out back. We've got lots of plants over that way, not so many this way. And if it grows a little bit tall, that's fine. Okay, so this is what the Phlox looks like and I think you will agree that if I had put the Echinacea here, it would have detracted from the Rose of Sharon flower, it would have been exactly the same color. So now at least there's a little bit of variation. And that should continue flowering now until the frosts, if I keep deadheading. And then over here, I think you will agree that the Echinacea has added some lovely color over to this side as well. Oh, and I'm worn out. Although it's cloudy, it's very warm. I'm trying to do all this before 10 o'clock when it's supposed to be raining. So anyway, I'm glad to have got those in the ground. While I'm over this side of the garden, I just wanted to show you how beautiful this is looking. It's the Chinese Plumbago and it's not very often that you get blue colors in the garden. This I pruned back so hard right back in, well, it was one of the very first videos I did and it is just gorgeous. I just wanted to show you that. As I was sitting so close to it, it caught my eye and actually it looks really nice. The very end of the day, white flowers show up really late at night and this blue one does as well. So it's very, very pretty. There is one more job that I want to do in the garden. One of my, I don't think we can call it a failure because a failure is only a failure if you fail to learn from it. So I'm calling it my struggle and it is my sweet peas. Yes, I was full of hopes for this sweet pea. And I've really tried and I've watered it, I've put it in the sun, I've done everything I can to care for this sweet pea. And so it is time to go. Now I know it looks a little bit bare but it looks better than dead leaves in my opinion. And we still have these pretty little flowers. So thanks for joining me. I am Jeanette, I am the Enthusiastic Gardener. I hope you are having fun in your gardens. Just doing a little bit of clearing up today, planting a couple of plants which hopefully will look nice well into the autumn. I will see you again very soon. Take care now. Thanks for watching. Bye.