Top 5 flowering plants to have in your garden for November and December

Inspired Villages’ Head of Horticulture, Pilar Medrano-Dell shares her 5 favourite plants that will ensure November and December in your garden will still be colourful.

Autumn is to me the most beautiful of seasons. I love walking through the leaves fallen on the ground with that swish-swosh sound that takes you into a sort of meditative state. We become more reflective as we prepare for winter and our gardens are starting to get ready for a quieter time to replenish and grow beneath the ground.

But, that doesn’t mean it is all over above ground.  Apart from the amazing autumn colour on our trees, there are still plenty of perennials that will be flowering well into November or even December.

Here are your top five flowering plants that will continue giving you joy in the garden during this time:

Salvia ‘Amistad’

Salvias, or sage as they are commonly known, can be annuals, biennials, perennials or even shrubs, but what they do have in common is that they are very much fuss-free and once established you won’t have to do much to them other than a once a year cut back if needed. ‘Amistad’ is more of a shrubby specimen, very vigorous and showy. I have mine outside the main door of the house in two pots with Calamagrostis brachytrica.

Asters

You can see asters everywhere at this time of the year, they are a classic for autumn colour. They grow wild in urban settings and you will see them in the distance as a great mass of purple blue just doing its thing everywhere. In the cultivated garden I particularly like Aster novae-angliae ‘Violetta’ and if you want one for shade Aster divaricatus, the wood aster, is the one.

African bush daisy or Euryops chrysanthemoides

The most cheerful of yellows for November, the African bush daisy, is a small shrub from southern Africa and it can get as tall as 2m. Again, another easy to maintain but highly ornamental plant. I deadhead it and it keeps flowering well into winter.

Verbena bonariensis

I know it is everywhere but, there are a few reasons for that. Yes, it does self-seed but you can actually play around with this and edit it to the way you want it to be present in your garden. I once made it into an informal hedge along a path and this particular one was scented so it was a delight to walk along it. There is another reason why it is everywhere and that is because it is incredibly resilient in dry conditions and it is also a great one to use dotted around as a transparency tool in your planting design.  But if you are really fed up with seeing it everywhere try Verbena hastata for a change.

Rudbeckia triloba 'Prairie Glow'

This is quite a different Rudbeckia from what you may be used to seeing. It has long, tall branching stems with smaller flowers that look beautiful intermingled with flowy grasses giving your scheme an ethereal feel.  Important to say that it holds an Award of Garden Merit which means it is a top performer. Not fully hardy in some areas of the UK but you can always use it as an annual. And if you want a really special one try Rudbeckia triloba or ‘Prairie Glow’.