My garden is dotted with Hylotelephium ‘Herbstfreude Group’, formerly known as Sedum ‘Autumn Joy’. One might argue that there is a little too much of it, but as it comes into flower in August and the bees and butterflies dance around it, I feel justified. Not only is it a brilliant wildlife plant; its sturdy, painterly presence holds the late summer garden together. It’s a tough plant that’s easy to grow in all soils, whether in sun or semi-shade. It also works well in containers and is ideal for rooftops and other exposed positions, being drought-tolerant.
The flat, broad flowerheads are made up of hundreds of tiny star-shaped blooms that are rich in thin nectar. It’s not just things that flutter and buzz that like them – all sorts of insects will dine and live there. The seedheads are extremely robust: they will make it through the winter, even capped in snow. One year I left all the outer seedheads in place so that they acted as staking to the new growth, because ‘Herbstfreude’ does have a habit of collapsing and baring its middle. It’s particularly liable to flop if it is overfed, in too rich soil. Being mean to this one, and pinching out the growth in June, will keep it neater, otherwise you do need to come up with some means of staking.
I hadn’t got the cuttings for free, I might have been more selective and gone for ‘Matrona’, which is a paler pink and a little taller – it can reach up to 80cm while remaining upright. The leaves turn pewter in autumn, which is a lovely thing. A more compact and orderly choice might be H. telephium ssp ruprechtii ‘Hab Gray’. The flower buds are rosy pink, but once open they fade to creamy buff. It will stay a nice neat 35cm tall.
If you love dusky purples for your late summer garden, then H. ‘Xenox’ is the one for you (Claire Austin stocks it). The leaves are deep purple and emerge from April, whereupon the plant sits in a neat mound, up to 30cm tall, till late summer, when it is covered in smoky pink flowers that darken with age. It looks particularly good with the compact ornamental oregano ‘Rosenkuppel’.
H. ‘Ruby Glow’ has the richest wine-red flowers and is low-growing at about 25cm high, but it does have a lax habit, meaning it works best on a scree, or scrambling out of a wall crevice, or at the front of the border where it will flop on to the path. Its bluish-grey foliage darkens with age.
Hylotelephium looks great planted with other strong purples and reds, such as Italian aster (Aster amellus) ‘Veilchenkönigin’, Knautia macedonica and liriopes. Lilacs and blue flowers can work well too, such as Perovksia ‘Blue Spire’, Agastache ‘Blue Fortune’ and blue geraniums. Add some grasses, such as Mexican feather grass (Stipa tenuissima), rough feather grass (Stipa calamagrostis) or purple moor grass Molinia caerulea ‘Dauerstrahl’, which has lovely deep purple flower heads, and you’ll have a wonderful late summer combination.
