Not Ready to Say Goodbye to Stunning Late Summer Blooms

We’ve all experienced the intense summer heat of Southwest Florida and it can also be challenging to the summer garden. But there are flowering shrubs that are able to withstand the hot humid weather and provide vivid summer stunners in the landscape.

But they are fading fast. They produce red, pink, yellow, white, and orange flowers and some are a great source of food for bees and hummingbirds. As I drive around the island, I come across these tough plants with their spectacular blooms. Here is my list which also includes flowers from my own garden.

Beach sunflowers (Helianthus debilis) makes the perfect ground cover for our coastal areas as it loves sandy soil and is drought and salt tolerant. It is native and produces bright yellow sunflower like blooms year-round and butterflies love them.

Blanket Flower (Gaillardia) grows in a spreading mound which can also be used as a ground cover. It is drought, heat, and salt tolerant. It is native with blooms in bright orange, yellow, red, reddish, and purple.

White Lantana (native lantana involucrata) with white flowers and vivid purple berries both drought, heat, and salt tolerant with fragrant leaves grows more like a mounding shrub than a ground cover. A native plant that attracts bees and other pollinators.

Ixora(family rubiaceae) is a tropical beauty known for its pom-pom clusters of irresistible bright flowers of hot pink, white and deep reds giving your garden that WOW eye catching factor. Unfortunately, they are often used for hedges and being trimmed badly stunts their ability to flower profusely.

Mussaenda (family Rubiaceae) is a rare tropical beauty and is admired for its intense beauty. What you see are not flowers but “bracts (like the bougainvillea) with small yellow flower on top. In bloom, it is the show stopper of your landscape and comes in peach, pink and white. Allamanda is a popular, easy to grow shrub with bright green foliage and abundant clusters of trumpet shaped yellow flowers. It can be used as an accent, a hedge, or a privacy screen. There is also a vine variety. 

Allamanda cathartica (“Brazilian Red Wine”) is a favorite in my garden. It is unusual, eye catching, exotic and its name comes from the dark burgundy bell-shaped flowers. Not an easy variety to find.

Allamanda blanchetii (or Cherry Jubilee) is part of my Allamanda collection in a swirl of cherry colors with a deep purple throat.

Pagoda plant (Clerodendrum paniculatum) an upright evergreen shrub growing up to eight feet tall and wide. The leaves are bright green, heart-shape and grow to a foot in diameter. It produces big clusters of showy orange reddish flowers in tiers like the shape of a pagoda and is a favorite for bees, butterflies, and backyard birds.

Gold Shrimp (Pachystachys lutea) a whimsical favorite in the landscape for its showy flower heads of gold bracts with flecks of small white flowers. The bracts resemble a shrimp’s layered scales.

Driving around the island I came upon Calusa Garden Club member Susan LaGrotta’s native plant landscape with colorful beach sunflowers, blanket flowers, red salvia, fire bushes and mounds of white lantana. Being late summer, some of the flowers were beginning to fade but the flocks of bees and butterflies did not seem to mind.

At a recent visit to the Dolphin Tiki Restaurant, I noticed a beautifully planted accent of beach sunflowers and patches of bromeliads along the pathway to the restaurant. According to Kathy McNabb, also a Calusa Garden Club member, “last year during the COVID lockdown, some of the residents started a garden at Anglers Cove. The residents worked with their board and maintenance staff with a focus on Florida native plants, with minimum maintenance and adding color to the landscape.”

As you are looking for beautiful flowers to add to your garden collection, consider some of the stunning conversation starters for your lanai or front garden.