Brightly coloured plants for hot gardens

White flowers are much harder to see in the glare of strong summer sunlight than those that are rollicking shades of red, bright yellow or pink.  As these tips will suggest, don't be afraid of putting plants like hot-coloured zinnias into a sunny garden, but do limit your colour scheme to a few coordinating colours. The brighter the colours are, the more noticeable they will be if they clash.

• When working with orange, combine it with its complementary colour, which is deep purple. Use flowering and foliage plants in yellow shades, such as butter daisies, 'New Gold' lantana and 'Marguerite' ornamental sweet potato vine to help blend together bright flowers.
• Tone down the intense magenta of flowers, such as rose campion and some hardy geraniums, by combining them with plants that have neutral, silvery gray leaves, such as dusty miller and artemisia.
• Care-free evergreens, such as juniper and mugo pine, also have a calming influence on bright bloomers, and they not only make great companions and provide a neutral background for setting off flower colours, but they also maintain their fresh greenery through winter, when they become the main attraction of the border.
• If your winters are mild, you have the opportunity to grow cool-season annuals from fall to spring.
• Annual dianthus, dusty miller, pansies, and snapdragons are sold as fall bedding plants in warmer climates, and planting them can keep your garden colourful nearly year-round.
• In cool-winter areas, look for flowering cabbage and kale, which can survive mild freezes. You'll find the cold-hardy annuals mentioned above in early spring.
• Adding a few of them to planters and window boxes can add one or two months of colour to the growing season.

• Alstroemeria
• Artemisia
• Blanket flower
• Bluebeard
• Boxwood
• Buddleia
• Butterfly weed
• Canna
• Carolina jessamine
• Cleome
• Cockscomb
• Coreopsis
• Crocosmia
• Euonymus
• Euphorbia
• Geranium
• Gladiolus
• Golden chain tree
• Goldenrod
• Hops
• Hyacinth bean
• Joe Pye weed
• Juniper
• Lacebark pine
• Lantana
• Love-lies-bleeding
• Magic lily
• Red hot poker
• Rudbeckia
• Salvia
• Stonecrop
• Verbena
• Zinnia