september wedding

My daughter is to be married next September at our house in Italy.We have a wild garden of olives and lavender. We have room to plant for September flowers but I have not a CLUE WHAT TO DO, WHEN TO PLANT for September colour. I am interested in planting plumbago and japenese anemonies and asters and roses. Could anyone tell me what to do and when to do it. Any other suggestions for colour in late September please let me know.
Thank you Kinross

 

I presume it is the Italian garden you need this for, presumably for the photos to look good!!

Lady of Leisure here lives in Portugal, so she would be the best person to have the most similar conditions to you, but she's away on hols for a few days. If you ahve a look at the thread about her garden in the Algarve, it would maybe give you some ideas for the time being.
http://www.gardenerscorner.co.uk/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=9;t=000210


Other than that, for the specific plants you're interested in, have a look at this link
http://www.savvygardener.com/Features/seed_starting_calendar.html

- always bearing in mind that this isn't based on Italy..... but the general principles of light heat and water are the same. Good luck! :D

The best place to check up on individual plants needs and suitability to your conditions is the RHS site, particularly their plant selector, where you can fill in the boxes with the details of what your conditions are, and what type of features you are looking for in the plant, etc - follow this link

http://www.rhs.org.uk/rhsplantselector/

[ 10. October 2006, 12:45 PM: Message edited by: dendrobium ]

 

Hello, kinross, and welcome to GC, and thank you dendro for the intro.

Firstly, kinross, it would be useful to know where in Italy you are .... North or South?

Secondly, what sort of a garden are you aiming to achieve? Is is just borders around the house? Do you want shrubs, climbers or just flowers? Other than the olive trees and lavender, is there anything else? A photo would be useful.

September is a funny time of the year here for flowers to be honest. Most shrubs are recovering from their summer rest ready for the winter bloom, which is when we have the most colour due to it being our rainy season.

Plumbago is almost finished here in September but Bougainvillea is in full colour. It's good to mix say a wine-coloured one with a pale pink / white one for extra effect and they can be trained into a small tree. Here they can be purchased from 1-2 metres tall but they can be slow to settle in and are often still straggly the second and third years.

Roses are very popular here and used en masse to give lots of colour. Margaritas (African Daisies) come in yellow, pink, wine-coloured and white and the whole plant can be covered bumper to bumper with flowers.

If you can answer the above questions, perhaps I could be of more help to you.

 

LOL can probably help more being from the same latitude. If it were here, Roses should be planted now. If you want a display of asters and anemone, then look for the bigger plants - quite a few of the garden centres are getting rid of their perrenials, so good time to look for them. Again, here I would plant both now - gives them the winter to get established.

 

That's useful, Fran. I have a friend in North Italy and she can't grow what I can because she gets too cold, so knowing the location would be of benefit.

I cannot grow Asters here due to the heat of the summer and my Anenomes, which I adore, bloom February - April with my Freesias, all bought in England, I might add stating blooming in the Autumn!

Following is a pathetic display but the only pic I have of the Anenomes!