Fleeting glory!

My border... forgot to add the pic ☺

Some flowering evergreens which won't be too invasive to those that you plant in the spring/summer, or different coloured acers or heathers.

So pretty Wildrose if I were you I'd get small perennials, perhaps herbs to fill the spaces. Enjoy it while it lasts. It can take years to get garden borders right.

we have Geums poppies and a spiky purple thing whose name escapes me , these in among the early perennials carries on the colour till autumn. Oh and osteoprernum

https://www.gransnet.com/uploads/talk/201906/medium-201766-img-1115.jpg https://www.gransnet.com/uploads/talk/201906/medium-268926-img-1090.jpg

wildrose, your border is beautiful. I know what you mean about having a sudden flush of colour then nothing, and everything looking a bit tatty. I put salvias, helenium, rudbeckia, achillea and veronicastrum verginicum in for late flowers. The salvias are out now, and should last another month, I think, but the helenium are only just starting to flower and the veronicastrum will take another month. So, some suggestions for keeping the show going. The bees love these plants too, so an added bonus. In the (not very good) picture, you can see the salvias, the achillea just coming into colour and one orange helenium just in front of the salvias. And a picture of a bee (I haven't seen one like that in the garden before).

Thanks for the suggestions ? I like the idea of flowering evergreens - I will look some up. I'm fairly new to gardening and need things to be low maintenance as I am unable to do heavy work. Herbs would be good too. Mine are in pots at the moment. That's a lovely picture too aggie.

Lovely pics too CyclingKnitter - I've noted your suggestions. I hope to have things blooming in smooth succession as I suppose all do and it's a real learning curve. Enjoying the lessons though!

Oooh I've not seen a bee like that either!

Geranium Rozanne flowers until September, unlike some of the other varieties. Also Osteospermum went on through the last winter for me. I have recently planted a new bed and am most pleased with the giant Alliums and Foxgloves for height, but they will only last for a few more weeks. I tried to grow some Verbena Bonariensis from a packet of seeds, but they came through as Nicotianas! I am also fond of Heuchera which have evergreen foliage of every colour imaginable, plus spikes of flowers early on.

wildrose, it's taken me more than 15 years to get to this - I've had so many disasters and re-starts and think-agains. Some of it my fault - not knowing how big things would grow, not bothering to divide perennials (or knowing how!), not thinking about how much or little water things will need. It's definitely ongoing learning. I agree with the comment about Geranium Rozanne - they're amazing, lasting for ages.

another fan of Rozanne , it will stand a bit of cutting back if it gets tatty and come up again like new . The last picture was last year , just taken a new snap

Wow aggie, that’s beautiful- really lovely against the white wall.

My back fence came down, yet again, two years ago. We have never put another one up. The end of the garden is higher than the rest of the garden and the house over the back is the same. Instead we have joined together and established a wonder bank of wild flowers. So now we have a wonderful view instead of a fence, we can chat and talk and yet still have our privacy. My son calls it a community garden. The flowers this year have been just out of this world and we hope for the same next.

Erigeron will continuously flower if dead headed.. calendula. Potentilla shrub flowers continuously. Many species of hebe too.

You've all got such lovely gardens, mine is much more wild or scruffy, call it whatever, but I do get lots of wildlife. I can't bring myself to buy achillea though as I still think of it as yarrow and it grows wild in my lawn.

That could be one of the Carpenter Bees.

Cosmos are a lovely filler.go on and on flowering till winter if you deadhead them..

Aster are good, together with monarda and some of the smaller grasses. Neither of mine are flowering yet, but they go on well into the autumn. I also can never resist a repeat flowering rose.

It looks lovely wildrose.
I wouldn't bother with annuals, just smaller perennials. Your geraniums will flower again if you cut them back, I'd also go for Astrantia (pink, claret, white) and smaller anemones (such as White Swan), smaller penstemon (all colours), veronica spicata (pink, blue, mauve). There are lots of slightly taller campanulas in blue or white such as campanula persificolia ("fairy bells") though they may be a bit tall for what you want. I particularly like the little daisy with silver leaves called Anthemis punctata subsp. cupaniana - bit of a mouthful but it always looks fresh, you just deadhead to keep it going and chop it back to stop it getting too wide.
None of these get fungal problems in my garden, unlike some of the others such as achillia or phlox.
If you go to one of the large online plant sellers like Crocus you can choose plants by flowering month, colour and size. That would give you ideas, though obviously you could buy them locally.
If you want bits of annual to fill gaps I'd always go for some sort of small violas rather than the big pansies.

Barmeyoldbat I'd love to see a photo of your flowering bank, sounds like the perfect solution.

wildrose a lot of those plants will go on flowering anyway,
But what we do is to plant all sorts of things in pots and move them around to fill gaps.Pelargoniums and dahlias will flower well into the autumn.

Barmeyoldbat what flowers did you put in your wildflower patch ?

I use pots and then I can fill gaps as they appear

This was my sunny border a couple of evenings ago.

The geums will carry on all summer and into the autumn.
At the moment it’s geraniums, foxgloves, mallow, the loosestrife just coming out, and later it will be montbretia, Japanese anemones and a tall yellow daisy thing that came from my Mum’s garden. Sedums too - the leaves provide a good contrast to other things and then their flowers appear in late summer.

This thread is like GQT with pictures.
I'm waiting for the perennial pea to flower in my riot cottage garden border. There's a fuschia too.
Nowadays, I've reluctantly planted shrubs in half of the long border for ease of care. They do grow huge and I must remember to prune them when the time comes - especially the hebes.