Showy begonias and dahlias are a joy in the late summer garden
The spoils of a late summer garden are many - provided you're not too fussy about flowers, ie a touch haughty-cultural. If you think begonias are vulgar, as some gardeners do, you're missing out.
What they lack in subtlety - and goodness knows, nobody could call them elegant or dainty - they make up for in showy, spectacular Las Vegas glamour. Huge flowers the size of my fist in the brightest of shades: the rich velvety scarlet layered blooms, like a dancer's skirt, seem to shimmer in the sun. It seems amazing that such abundance came from one small corm.
The other begonia that has been starring on my terrace is an unknown variety, because I rescued three scrappy plants from the remnants bin at the garden centre, and potted them up together. The result: cascading day-glo pink bellflowers that just keep on going, looking like outsize fuchsia flowers (below). They fall well, too, making blobs of colour on the ground that don't seem to fade.
I've yet to be won round by lemon begonias, but feel the same way about lemon dahlias, too. That hasn't stopped me growing dahlias in every other shade, notably the shocking pinks with marvellous chocolate foliage such as Excentrique and the wonderfully near-black cactus dahlia, Chat Noir (below).
Dahlias are tremendous value for money: bury the tuber, stand well back, and gasp at the display which starts when other summer flowers are peaking, and continues well into autumn. Like begonias, they've been sneered at by the cognoscenti for years, outlawed to the suburbs and local horticultural shows, until revived in recent years by the late Christopher Lloyd at Great Dixter and Sarah Raven.
I must admit that new Dahlia Tahoma Moonshot (above) doesn't quite live up to her name: those lemon and cerise petals are special, but the flowers are dainty and gosh, even subtle - and that's one thing neither begonias or dahlias should ever be.