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Garden glow-up: Top flowers that thrive in direct sunlight

A lot of work goes into planning a garden, before you ever get near the soil there is designing the layout and figuring out where the sunny parts of your garden are so you can know which plants to cultivate.

For your garden to fully thrive, you need to determine how much sunlight you have in the garden throughout the day. Full sun means the garden gets six to eight hours of direct sunlight during the day.

Flowers that thrive in direct sunlight

Having a solid base of sun-loving flowering perennials keeps you from having to start over every season and gives you and your garden a palette to work with. There are plenty of sun-loving flowering perennials with striking flowers that, once established, can be largely hands-off. Reliable direct sunlight-loving flowers are great for attracting pollinators, which will help keep your garden vibrant and wildlife-friendly.

1. Daylily flowers

Big and gorgeous daylily blooms will appear early to midsummer if given the right amount of sunlight. These flowers multiply quickly, meaning you can divide in a few years and gain more plants. When in full bloom, they bloom in beautiful colours, mostly bright orange. So enjoy an abundance of colourful lilies in your garden.

2. Coneflower

These bright daisy-like blooms come in a profusion of colours and sizes. They flower from early to midsummer for weeks with their traditional purple flowers, but these days they come in varieties of many other colours. Their fragrant flowers can be used fresh or dried for echinacea tea.

3. Columbine

Columbines love and thrive in sunlight. These graceful, elegant flowers bloom for weeks in late spring to early summer. Although they typically last only a few years, they however often drop seeds which start new little plants. Columbine will produce more blooms with some needing deadheading.

4. Lavender

In warmer conditions, lavender thrives in hot, sunny, and even dry conditions as but as perennial. They will reward you with a gorgeous aroma and usable herb leaves. When growing lavenders, pick a spot and don’t move it around as the woody classic is cranky about being moved once established.

 

Compiled by: Chumasande Matiwane

First published by Garden & Home

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