Sabrina Hahn gardening advice: The best plants to add colour to your garden from crotons to gaillardias

Hot colours are great in a garden, creating a tropical feel even when it’s bone dry and stinking hot.

Yellow, orange, red and hot pink flowers all mixed in together is like Mardi Gras, garden style. The bright sunshine adds to the festive feel.

Choosing plants for hot colours needs to be thought out carefully. You want flowers to bounce off the foliage, like Hibiscus rosa-sinensis — its bright red flower on dappled white, pink and green foliage. It’s important not to situate full shade plants next to full sun plants and keep them in separate areas.

Other great plants to add foliage colour are crotons and coleus; their foliage is outstanding. Adding some bright orange zinnia or Hibiscus Jazzy with its bright orange blooms is like fireworks going off in the garden. Zinnias are an annual but if you get the older variety, they self-seed every year.

Old-fashioned gaillardia, which comes in red and yellow, may only last for a year or two but it flowers nonstop for that time. Although it looks delicate it’s quite tough, preferring afternoon shade. Biennials such as these require deadheading to encourage another burst of flowers.

Coleus is also a shade lover; they get hammered by caterpillars in the summer months but caterpillars are easy to control by picking off in the morning.

Crotons require morning sun to obtain the colours in the leaves. In humid tropical areas they will be happy in full sun, but Perth is too dry.

Perennial salvias can add blues, hot pinks and red depending on the species. They are tall and flower on and off all year-round. Put grasses in the mix to add different textures to a garden bed, similar to the perennial English border beds.

Although we could never achieve the lushness of an English perennial border, we have the ability to create a vibrant hot perennial garden that sings with colour and energy. It’s all about owning where you live and making the most of it.

Tip of the week

Buy annuals from seed. You will get a much larger range and they will self-seed in your garden, giving you free plants every season.

Three jobs to do

1. Trawl through bulb catalogues, being fully aware that many of them need a cold winter to flower. It’s best to purchase bulbs that are grown in WA.

2. The large grasshoppers are out and about in the metropolitan area. They are difficult to control unless you have maggies, butcher birds and wattlebirds.

3. Visit native nurseries to get a full catalogue of native plants to put in this autumn.