Rain-proof flowers
Storms can cause real havoc in gardens, but it’s not until summer when your flowering displays are most at risk – one short sharp shower can wreak havoc among your herbaceous borders: toppling hollyhocks, shattering poppies and turning unfolding blooms of roses into a soggy mess. So, if you’re fed up with missing out on your garden’s flowering potential here’s a selection of blooms that can cope with all that the weather can throw at them.
If you garden in an exposed spot you will be well used to choosing plants that can cope with the wind. Avoiding tall varieties with weak stalks as well as plants with blowsy double flowers. You can, to some extent, help protect vulnerable plants by staking them before they start to become top-heavy with flowers. Use individual bamboo canes for single-stemmed plants such as hollyhocks and twiggy sticks or special linking stakes for clump-forming varieties. Another trick is to create sheltered areas within your garden, planting the more delicate plants in protected coves between more robust neighbours. If a storm threatens when the flowers are just about to open, boost the protection with windbreak netting.
Choosing weather-proof flowers
‘Although it may need staking in windy gardens, the flat plate-like heads of deep golden-yellow summer flowers and fern-like leaves are worth it. Good rain resistance.
A frothy haze of tiny, greenish yellow flowers overflow the mound of pale green leaves all summer long. It tolerates a range of adverse conditions and, once established, is drought tolerant.
Stunning ruby-red late spring flowers held on wiry, branched stems above lobed, mid-green leaves. Mine has battled though this year’s storms well.
Tough as they come, this robust evergreen is ideal on most soils. Rose-pink spikes of flowers during spring are held above the leathery rounded dark green leaves.
Clusters of orange-yellow flowers are borne from July to September above rounded, deep, dark, glossy chocolate maroon leaves. Wind and rain resistant.
Mounds of marbled leaves that are hairy to the touch. This handsome Jerusalem sage produces bluish -lilac flowers from late winter to late spring. Truly weather proof.
Semi-double, fragrant, golden-yellow summer flowers are resistant to wind and rain - perfect for an open, sunny site with fertile, moist, well-drained soil.
Vigorous and robust, 'Blessings' stands up well to both disease and the weather. A profusion of large, fully double, scented, salmon-pink flowers are borne all summer.
This beautiful, repeat-flowering climbing rose is the most popular, yellow climbing variety with large, double, clear-yellow flowers from July to September. Wind and rain resistant.
