Plants with June Flowers – A Gardening Guide

These June flowering perennial plants will come back year after year with the minimal of effort.

June Flowering Tree

It’s a waiting game for Magnolia wilsonii’s (magnolia) flowers to open but the wait is worth it. In late spring this deciduous magnolia’s buds appear on red-purple shoots before opening to large, white, bowl-shaped flowers with deep pink stamens in May or June. This tree can reach up to 6m high and 6m wide as a multi-stemmed shrub but can be trained as a small tree too.

June Flowering Shrub

Callistemon ‘citrinus splendens’ (Bottle brush) is a native of Australia. Its brush-like crimson flowers appear in June on pinkish-red shoots which age to dark green and it can flower right through until September. Although there are a few varieties, this one releases a delicious lemon scent when crushed. A lovely specimen tree or shrub but it is equally at home in a hedgerow.

June Flowering Climbing Plants

Lonicera (Honeysuckle) are a summer favourite. The many varieties available make it hard to choose any particular one, but Ciliosa and ‘Dropmore Scarlet’ are particularly deep coloured and seem to shout out that summer is here. The former’s deep orange and the latter’s scarlet trumpet-shaped flowers make up for their lack of fragrance and both will provide valuable shade with their abundant blue-green leaves if left to scramble over a pergola.

June Flowers

Spectacular flowers for en-masse planting are the Allium family. The dense, purple globes burst out, like fireworks, from mid-green wand-like stems. Allium Giganteum can reach nearly 2m high and Allium Hollandicum ‘Purple Sensation’ is around 1m high. Their strap-like leaves tend to fade as the flowers open and so they are best planted amongst ornamental grasses to hide the dying leaves. Alternatively, they look fantastic with a few of them grown together in a large container.

Stuck for ideas on what to plant with Allium? Then look no further than Geum (avens).’Juliana’ has pretty, fiery, long-lasting orange flowers (June to September) nodding atop wiry stems above puckered foliage. ‘Lemon drops’ flowers from May to June and its acid yellow flowers bob gracefully on elegant stems, protruding from mounds of green leaves. The leaves are perfect for covering up the not-so-elegant Allium leaves once they have gotten past their best and the colours of these varieties make a lovely contrast with Allium’s deep purple and lilac tones.

With a bit of foresight your garden can have flowers throughout the year, if you choose carefully. To get that overlap between June flowers and plants that flower before and after it Plants with May Flowers – A Gardening Guide and Plants with July Flowers – A Gardening Guide will give you some more ideas.