Quick improvements in late summer to Acanthus spinosus

I’ve just updated the Limestone Garden website with some useful new info on keeping Acanthus spinosus looking good in late summer and early autumn.

Prostrate flower spikes and tattered leaves on late-summer Acanthus spinosus

This vigorous plant grows with enthusiasm, looking happy, healthy and lush even while other plants wilt as the sunny summer days fail to provide any rain. By late August the tall flower spikes fall to the ground, and the lower layers of those lush leaves are looking distinctly yellowed. What is more, in our garden I can’t easily cut the grass without shredding them messily, so they have to be brought under control.

Therefore, the secateurs come out, all prostrate flowers spikes are removed at their base and a good lot of the bottom-most layers of straggly leaves are removed. They head for the compost, while the resident frog settles in again under the remaining leaves.

Acanthus spinosus in late summer after tidying.

(Those white flowers next to the Acanthus are a white gaura (Gaura lindheimeri), which I grew from seed in 2014 from RHS seeds 14/57.)