Summer Color Favorites

In the Garden with Andrew

Andrew Bunting. Photo courtesy of the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society.

As summer heat becomes a daily phenomenon in the garden, summer annuals and tropicals are really starting to take hold and show luxuriant growth. I try many new species and cultivars in the garden each year, but I also have some favorites that I like to plant again and again, and I’ll undoubtedly add them if I can find them at the local garden center.

Ensete ventricosum ‘Maurellii’. Photo: Andrew Bunting

One of the “best of the best’’ is the red Abyssinian banana plant, Ensete ventricosum ‘Maurellii’.  This fast-growing plant has large, skyward-facing tropical leaves that are green on the top surface and dark red on the undersides, with an even darker red mid-rib. At the end of the summer, I always put a couple of dormant specimens in my basement to overwinter there, and then plant them in the garden the following May, which enables them to reach close to 12 feet tall by the end of the summer. I also buy young specimens that are about two feet tall—even those will reach between eight and 10 feet tall by the end of the summer. These banana plants are great additions to your annuals border, either to augment your perennial beds or to keep in large containers. Another of my favorite banana plants is Musa ‘Thai Black’. It is harder to find in garden centers, but worth the hunt. It has a very upright habit with green leaves and stunning violet-black stems.

Naranjilla, Solanum quitoense, is a summer annual that is native to Ecuador and Colombia. Although it is related to potatoes, its fruits have a tropical flavor that has been described as a blend of lime and rhubarb. I like to grow it because it has amazing large, velvety leaves, purple hairs that adorn the stems and leaf petioles, and deep purple spines that protrude through the leaves. However, because of the spines, grooming the plant to remove yellowing leaves can be a bit of a chore, and requires gloves. It starts as a small plant but can reach up to four feet tall within one growing season. The fruits turn bright orange, and when they are ripe, you can harvest them, collect the seeds, and plant them to germinate in future seasons.

The beautiful Solanum quitoense plant. Photo: Andrew Bunting

The bulbines are terrific South African flowering plants. They have slender, succulent leaves and an abundance of wand-like flowers that keep sending up flowering stems throughout the summer. Because of their narrow foliage and flowering stems, I love to put them in containers or window boxes. Bulbine frutescens ‘Tiny Tangerine’ and ‘Hallmark’ have bright orange flowers, while the “yellow form” has bright yellow flowers. Because of their succulent leaves, they would also make a great addition to summer plantings at the New Jersey shore.

The flowering salvias have gone through an amazing renaissance: there are many new series and cultivars whose blooms last through the summer and all the way to Halloween. All of the salvias are among the best plants for attracting ruby-throated hummingbirds. The Rockin® series has myriad colors. For example, Rockin® Fuchsia has black calyces and bright magenta flowers. Rockin® Deep Purple can reach 40 inches tall and has deep violet flowers. The Salvia Wish Collection® has many selections with long tubular flowers, and of all the new entries in the series, this one performs the best in my garden. ‘Wendy’s Wish’ was one of the first entries introduced: it has magenta-pink flowers. Other terrific selections have followed: ‘Amber Wish’ has coral-orange flowers; ‘Wishes and Kisses’ has pink flowers; and ‘Love and Wishes’ has deep purple flowers. The Salvia Skyscraper™ series is also exceptional, and produces an amazing abundance of flowers throughout the summer. Two of the best in that series are Skyscraper™ Orange Salvia (with coral-orange flowers) and Skyscraper™ Pink Salvia (with clear pink flowers). In addition, while Salvia ‘Purple Majesty’ has been on the market for a while, it is still a favorite because of its relatively large stature and its profusion of deep black-purple flowers. 

These are some of the many terrific annuals and tropicals that can be used to adorn your summer landscape, and most of them will continue thriving until the first frost.

Send your gardening questions to editor@swarthmorean.com. Put “Garden” in the subject line.

Andrew Bunting is vice president of public horticulture at the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society and vice president of the Swarthmore Horticultural Society.