Plants that love summer

Things will start heating up in the garden over the next couple of months and it will be time to reassess plants that cope and recover, and those that don’t.

If you are looking to replace plants that will survive the hottest spots in your garden, you can’t go past those with silver/grey foliage.

Here’s a couple of newcomers that may fit the bill.



Teucrium Silver Box

This is one of my favourite hero plants because of the combination of silver foliage and blue flowers.

It's a tough little plant that responds well to pruning but has a compact upright habit with silver foliage all year round.

The sky blue flowers appear in autumn through to early summer.

Teucrium prefers a full-sun position with added compost and manure to improve the soil. It’s an ideal plant for smaller gardens because it only grows to 1m high and 60cm wide.

Olive Garden Harvest

This is a dwarf fruiting olive that only grows to 1-2m in height, making it ideal for pots or as an edible hedge.

Grey-green foliage is the backdrop to small white flowers followed by masses of fruit in spring and summer, equally as suitable for the table as it is for oil. You would need quite a few plants to get your oil.

Olives prefer free-draining soil and a slow-release fertiliser. If they get too much nitrogen you will get lots of growth but little fruit.