Can anyone make any plant suggestions please?
I have a flowerbed that gets direct sun between 10-4 every (sunny) day, plus reflected light from windows nearby, so it's the most reliably sunny warm part of the garden. All my other beds have tree shade for various parts of the day!
It's only about 4' deep and runs between patio and lawn so I can access it easily from both sides.
The majority plant in it at the moment is white phlox paniculata, which looks and smells lovely when it's flowering! But it's doing less well as the summers get hotter, and the bed is rather bare during the rest of the year.
I'd like a flowering perennial that I can plant with the phlox, that will come up and flower in spring and be over by the time the phlox is taking off. Something to give this bed a longer season of interest. I don't want to get rid of the phlox (the way it spreads I doubt I could anyway!). I'd consider any colour as there's no real scheme in my garden!
I'm in central UK, not a dry area, but can sometimes get v cold and snowy in winter so plants here need to be hardy. The soil is perfectly "ordinary", neutral pH, neither sandy nor claggy.
All suggestions gratefully considered!