The Best Summer Color Plants for Northern Gardeners

How to Choose Summer Color Plants for Northern Climates

When you live where the snow flies until April or May, scrolling through beautiful images of flowers and dreaming about your summer garden is a good way to keep your spirit bright through the winter. Let’s start a plan today for adding a few summer blooming perennials and shrubs that will invigorate your landscape with fresh flowers from June until frost.

The plants recommended here all thrive as far north as U.S. Department of Agriculture Hardiness Zone 3 (minus 30 F to minus 40 F), and many are tough natives. Even on your coldest winter day, these plants will be fast asleep with their roots protected below ground so there’s no need to worry about them returning each spring.

A few key points to consider when choosing plants for your Northern garden:

• Because your season is relatively short, choose more plants that bloom by early August. If they flower too late, their duration of bloom may be cut short by an early frost.
• Know you can “cheat” with shade plants. Because the sun is less intense in colder zones, many plants can handle full sun even when their label says part shade.
• Your plants may not bloom when the label says they will. That’s because the flowering season is condensed in colder climates — the plants know their opportunity to bloom is brief. Some summer bloomers will overlap their flowering period with plants that haven’t yet finished their spring bloom. This differs than what happens in warmer climates where the flowering season is more evenly distributed over a period of many months.
• If starting a new bed for your summer blooming plants, be sure it’s not where you tend to pile snow in the winter. Snow makes a good insulator, but the slow melting in spring when the soil stays cold and wet over an extended period can easily kill plants sensitive to poor drainage.