Ask A Gardener: How can I make my garden look lush?

Question: What can I plant so that my garden looks lush in late summer?

Answer: Lots of plants flower in late summer, but they don’t look very impressive in pots at the nurseries in spring. Buy them now instead, while they’re on sale. Planted carefully and well-watered, they should do well.

Daisy relatives like Helenium (available in reds as well as yellow and orange), yellow Heliopsis, and black-eyed susan strike a strong color note that can be nicely set off by tall white phlox and lavender-blue Caryopteris (a small shrub). Tall phlox, with its wonderful fragrance, also comes in pink, lavender, almost true-blue, and fuchsia.

Russian sage in lavender-purple likes it hot and sunny, while native Joe-Pye weed for sunny moist areas is a dusty rose. Purple coneflower comes in many different colors now. An edging plant I love, twisted onion, Allium senescens glaucum, features little lavender-pink globes.

For partial shade, there is the low-growing Astilbe chinensis pumila with lavender-pink spikes, and just starting now the hybrid anemones in pink, rose, or white. Native cardinal flower blooms in red, and its relative, the wild blue lobelia, in bluish-purple. Turtlehead blooms pink or white.

Hosta varieties are available with showier, later-blooming flowers. The August lily is the old-fashioned fragrant Hosta often seen around New York state porches. Cimicifuga (now Actaea) Hillside Black Beauty is striking with its dark purple leaves and white flower spikes.

Skip Miscanthus ornamental grass is newly listed as invasive by the state Dept. of Environmental Conservation. Instead, plant Panicum virgatum Shenandoah. From a small pot in spring 2014, it has matured into a handsome clump 4 feet tall with reddish foliage and airy flower stalks. Planted next to August-blooming daylilies, such as Autumn Minaret, it provides great texture contrast.

Shrubs will provide color soon with red or black fruits (Aronia, Viburnums), or blue or white fruits (native dogwoods). The old-fashioned PG hydrangea is now available in new improved varieties.

Quickfire, Limelight, Pinky Winky and Tardiva produce a nice sequence of bloom. Rose-of-Sharon bush is available in triploid varieties which don’t produce seedlings. Blue Satin provides dark almost-true blue.

Its relative, the herbaceous perennial hibiscus, flourishes in moist sun. Once established, it’s almost shrub like with huge blooms in white, pink, or red; some have purple foliage. Be careful because it’s late to emerge in the spring. Native Clethra, summersweet, is fragrant and very adaptable as to soils or sun exposure; it also is available in a pink variety Ruby Spice.

Then there are the purple vegetables. Purple basil, purple cabbage, red lettuce, and many others turn the veggie garden into a color treat and offer extra nutrition as well.

Ask a Gardener appears weekly in The Journal during the growing season. For answers to other garden, lawn, landscape and pest questions, call Cooperative Extension at (607) 272-2292 or email: growline1@gmail.com. This article was written by Patricia Curran, horticulture program manager at Cornell Cooperative Extension of Tompkins County.