October

Gaura 'Cool Breeze' is a stunning new variety that is now available from seed. It produces a flurry of dazzling pure white, starry blooms on graceful slender stems. They have pale green stamens and buds instead of the usual pink. A first year flowering perennial, very easy to grow it will bloom in around 14 weeks from an early sowing.

Introduced in 2008, Gaura lindheimeri 'Summer Breeze' has now been made available in seed form. A hardier, more robust variety, long blooming and floriferous, it produces open, willowy, vase-shaped plants, with long graceful stems that suspend numerous little, dainty, butterfly shaped flowers at their tips.

Geranium 'Orchid Blue' is a simply stunning plant, producing clusters of saucer shaped flowers of a rarely seen shade of pure orchid-blue, each with purple-violet veins. This new-on-the-scene plant soon spreads to form low hummocks of deeply cut soft green, leaves.

Geranium phaeum ‘Samobor’ has considerable charm, with luxurious, deep maroon-black flowers which are held high on upright slender stems in late spring to early summer. This beautiful and useful hardy geranium is loved for its amazing deeply scalloped foliage with beautiful dark markings

'Dark Reiter’, is a fairly new cultivar originating from 'Victor Reiter' whose namesake was the legendary California nurseryman. What sets this plant apart is the new leaves that emerge a light maroon colour then fade to a purple-flushed deep green, it produces violet-blue flowers in spring.

Geranium pyrenaicum is a European species and well known for being one of the most floriferous of Geraniums. 'Summer Snow' is an easy to grow, yet hard to find white flowered cultivar which produces profuse quantities of white flowers each with deeply notched petals.

A beautiful, robust ground cover variety of the every popular Geranium sanguineum; ‘Vision Violet’ produces masses of large luminescent violet flowers from early spring to summer. The blooms cover this compact, mounding plant with intricately cut leaves.

Geum rivale, the Water avens is a native perennial of slow-draining or wet soils. Flowering prolifically it is particularly useful in damp soils and makes a good show besides ponds. It produces both nectar and pollen and is an excellent plant for attracting pollinators and amphibians to the garden.

If there's one plant that can inject a little razzle-dazzle into the border during gloomy late summers it is Helenium. From late July 'Helena' blooms with masses of vibrant blooms in a spectrum of rich colours from gold to mahogany red. Perfect for the back of the border and wonderful for cutting.