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We live In a world where we need to conserve water and I do my bit by trying to plant mostly perennials in my flower garden.

There is a place for annuals, though. This is the time for me, with a late-blooming mountain garden, to buy the first small batch. Earlier than this, with temperatures still falling below 8C at night, annuals don’t thrive.

I have always added annuals to the flower beds for two reasons: they grow quickly so that I have colour earlier in the season and they fill in the gaps in a way that perennials never seem to until August.

This year, talking to an employee at Schilliger Garden Centre who was setting out pots, I realized I buy them for a third reason, too. Fashion. I’d thought that was limited to things we wear, but the garden world, I’m learning, has its fashionable colours and new looks.

Schilliger’s collectors’ geraniums, which are always spectacular, come with an amazing variety of leaves, which offer texture in addition to colour on the veranda. I always leave these in pots, to take inside for the winter.

A particular charmer is one with pale pink flowers and orange-scented leaves, which I have placed next to one from last year that has bergamot scented leaves which haunt the veranda on warm days.

Their light pink tones probably influenced me because for the flower beds I bought the new-this-year pale pink double surfinia. It’s a beautiful, small, tumbling flower that looks like it must have come from someone’s grandmother’s garden. It fills a gap in front of leggy mountain columbine of similar tones.

Taller and brighter are the alstoemeria ligtu hybrids, perennials I couldn’t resist because of their luxuriant mass of flowers. They fill a spot in near where the slow-growing dahlias will come up. Dahlias don’t survive Alpine winters and after one season of trying to clean, dry and store the tubers I decided it would be simpler to plant new ones each year. That’s an expensive venture, however, so I now limit the number of dahlias in the bed. They flower only in mid- to late July but give rich colours until the first hard frost.

The alstroemerias bloom June to November, are happy in semi-shade or sun and make beautiful cut flowers. The only downside is that they break off easily, at least at this time of year, so I’ve staked them for now.

I also bought some lovely small-flower lantera, lower left in the photo, which look a bit lost near the larger and taller Iceland poppies and irises, but they will soon fill the space.

This is a patch where the neighbour’s car slid on an icy night, and we had to replant many things, including mystery bulbs that were displaced so we have no idea what they are or in the case of irises, what colour or type they are. A pretty little dwarf lilac lost half of its branches, but is recovering. I’ve left room for these plants to grow, so the lantera are a welcome space filler for this summer.

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