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.

Show-stopping lilies

The jury's out...on which white lily has the most beautiful bloom. Is it flamboyant Muscadet, with its amazing 9ins wingspan and gorgeous, pink-speckled fluted petals, or pure, perfect white Casablanca, totally white and softly dimpled?

Possibly Muscadet wins by a pink speckle, but that could have changed if I'd grown pink-throated waxy white Lilium regale…..and come to think of it, Lilium longiflorum, the florists' white lily, which is just as easy to grow, is equally captivating.

(Above) The flamboyant Muscadet lily and (right) the perfect white Casablanca lily

African Queen dazzled us last month with her huge, rich apricot trumpet flowers - more the colour of a day lily - that fade down to a shade of warm sand. Just one flower in a water glass looks glorious.

Nerone, a Sarah Raven purchase in her signature deep claret Venetian shade, didn't disappoint either, and all those glossy flowers with swept-back petals, like giant tigerlilies, are so sumptuous that even though they've faded now, I can't bear to remove them.

(Above) Dazzling African Queen and (right) the Nerone has a deep claret shade

Now it's the turn of the beautiful bridal whites. All of them smell sensational. And the delicate, rose pink and white species lily, speciosum rubrum, with those wonderful curved-back petals, just creeps over the back of the sun lounger - grow lilies in pots and you can give them pole position - so anybody can lie there and become intoxicated by that heavenly perfume. They look like a beautiful Japanese painting.

(Above) The delicate, rose pink and white speciosum rubrum lily

Despite all the colour and clamour of the containers on my terrace, provided by dark sultry dahlias, jet-black petunias, yellow tomatoes and other delights, when the lilies are out, they steal the whole show. I can never quite believe that they can look so magnificent yet be such a doodle to grow. All you do is throw three or five bulbs into a potful of compost in spring - or the previous autumn if you're really organised - and put them away, out of the spotlight, and forget about them.

A mulch of grit helps keep out the slugs and snails and keeps the pots looking neat. The leafy stems start to poke out of the compost early in summer, and keep growing - not always at the same rate, but you can't have everything. From that point you have to keep an eye out for the red lily beetle which loves nothing more than to chomp out the flower buds, so vigilance is key, but it certainly pays off.

Amazingly, after having put in such a fantastic performance, the bulbs will do exactly the same thing the following year. I can't think of any other plants that will give such spectacular results for so little work on the gardener's behalf.