The Agapanthus or Blue African Lily is one of the aristocrats of the late summer garden. The exotic combination of graceful foliage and stunning flowers is equally impressive in the border or large terracotta planter.

With its pure white bark, shiny green leaves and yellow autumn colour, the Japanese White Birch is one of the most ornamental birch trees. There are many landscape uses for this beautiful specimen, including an excellent lawn tree, shade tree, specimen for showy bark or near a patio.

The rich, rusty copper-bronze, fine leaved foliage of Carex Red Rooster is very popular with designers. With an upright arching form, the tips of the thin linear leaves curl as they mature and flex gracefully in the breeze, giving colour, texture and movement in the perennial garden.

Amazon Mist is a graceful ornamental grass with arching silver white evergreen foliage, each ending with a slight curl. The flowing mounds of fine textured are lovely spilling over slopes and walls. It adds colour and texture to both summer and autumn displays.

Carex Prairie Fire is an outstanding specimen plant. In spring the attractive green bronze, fine leaved foliage erupts into colour like burning embers. In late summer, panicles of rosy flowers appear just above the foliage

'Black ball' flowers are a lovely rich milk-chocolate hue, almost black on cloudy days! These beauties grow well as border plants and are wonderful in a cutting garden; they look fabulous clustered among other contrasting flowers such as roses.

Echinacea is a perennial herb that grows up to a metre in height, the purple flower is in the form of a high cone. Until the late 1930s, Echinacea angustifolia was the only species used in medical practice, Echinacea is valued as a short-term stimulant to the immune system.

Echinacea pallida is one of the more rare members of the Echinacea family. They have much longer, ray flowers than those of the more familiar purple coneflower, the plants bloom earlier and continue to bloom sporadically through the autumn months.

Purple coneflower is named because of its flower colour. The rest of the plant has green foliage and the seed heads are black. It is a wonderful plant for attracting butterflies and, if allowed, will naturally spreads through seed at the end of the growing season.

Echinacea are erect, clump-forming rhizomatous perennials with simple or pinnately lobed leaves and solitary, long-stalked daisies with prominent conical central disks.This is a wonderful plant for attracting butterflies and bees to the garden, It lasts well though the summer and is ideal for cutting.

This attractive sea holly forms clumps of evergreen, soft, deep green heart-shaped leaves. In early summer, the thin wirey stems emerge, set with spiny leaves. The branched stems carry a profusion of small, sea holly flowers in bright, steely blue. It prefers full sun and well-drained soil.

The fine clouds of feathery, bronze-purple leaves are wonderful as a centre piece for a sunny herb garden, or among tall perennials and grasses. The foliage acts as a delicate veil through which the flower heads of herbaceous plants and bulbs can be seen.

Festuca amethystina has the most striking combination of silvery-blue, tufted blades of foliage, with drooping, dark violet-tinged flower stems that will rise above the foliage in the first year if sown early enough. It is a gem for containers or a rock garden.