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September: Sedums

The large herbaceous sedums, also known as Ice Plants, start to show colour in August but are often at their best in September, continuing into October. The flat starry nectar-rich flowers of sedums are particularly popular with hoverflies, good natural predators in the garden, as well as attracting bees and butterflies. Sedums can be described as good doers in the plant world, particularly when grown hard on well drained soils in full sun, as apart from very occasional lifting and dividing they need little attention. If your soil is on the heavy side then mixing a good helping of coarse grit or gravel into the planting hole will help these plants through any wet winter weather.

Sedums provide good foliage from early spring until late summer when they start to flower, the flowers are long lived and the seed heads look good all winter. Cut the old flower heads down in February or March to allow the new growth to come through.

The well known and rightly popular S. ‘Herbstfreude’ (syn. Autumn Joy) has grey green leaves, large heads of waxy buds matching the leaves and then finally rich pink starry flowers, which get darker as they mature. Another good green leaved cultivar is S. spectabile ‘Brilliant’ which has pale pink flowers, looks good in bud and has attractive, long lasting dead heads. Good companions for the green leaved sedums are early pale blue and white bulbs, such as crocus, scillas and chionodoxas.

There are a few variegated cultivars such as S. spectabile ‘Pink Chablis’ which has clear pink flowers Aug-Sep and pink-flushed cream variegated grey-green foliage.

There are also darker leaved sedums that start to flower slightly earlier and their distinct, almost purple foliage looks dramatic with early summer orange flowers such as marigolds or californian poppies. Later in the year some of the smaller grasses such as Panicum virgatum ‘Heavy Metal’ or Pennisetum orientale which both have purple tinges make an effective contrast in texture.

S. telephium subsp. Maximum Atropurpureum has big dusky purple leaves and maroon flowers while the taller S. telephium 'Matrona' has purple flushed leaves and large flat heads of pale rose pink flowers that look best in a dry summer!

A low growing plant for border edges is S. ‘Vera Jameson’ at only 10” tall but also with purple leaves and dusky pink flower heads in late summer.

CAF