Seasons: Summer

Opens at four in the afternoon and self-sows itself around the garden.

Velvet crested heads that hold colour for weeks, in sun or half shade.

The most reliable cut flower for an Indian summer terrace.

A fortnight of spectacle and then a head of seed the birds will take.

Opens in full sun on a terrace where nothing else will survive noon.

Flowers every day of the year and asks for nothing. Indigenous to the deccan.

Flowers nearly all year in a warm city, and sunbirds find it within a week.

A pot by an open window does more for a summer evening than any air freshener.

Green by day and overpowering by night; plant it away from a bedroom window.

Grows from a bare cutting pushed into dry soil; scents a whole terrace.