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I love early September: the sun is still hot but the nights are not stifling. The majority of plants have flowered and faded away but there are still some, particularly the dahlias, that are flowering their little heads off. There was a time when

of muffled hens while others are as small and delicate as the eyelashes of newborn babies. Some flower in May and others in July. Which one should you choose? How do we know which are the best, most reliable plants? It can get a bit confusing, especially when

and their exuberance. By 'big' I mean something that dwarfs its neighbours and reaches at least 2m high. I have five such plants in my garden.The first is Inula magnifica. I can see the cheerful, shaggy yellow flowers from my office and they never cease to amuse me

by this plant: on the surface it is an excellent idea - fast growing, popular with bees, long flowering (it will happily perform for months) and reliably tough in all situations. However, it is also as untameable as a coach load of Visigoths on the razzle

as cut flowers). I saw them at the base of street trees, gleefully mixed in with bright chrysanthemums and lipstick-pink cyclamen. Not  a very conventional mixture but certainly striking.There are variations: this one has a good solid evergreen box edge