Flowering Summer Plants

Ground Covers

• Ground cover plants with summer blooms come in many forms, such as annuals, perennials, shrubs and vines. Creeping zinnia, for example, is an annual growing to 16 inches high that flowers from June through autumn, when the first frost ends the festivities. Creeping zinnia works as well in a container or in a flowerbed. Early summer is the blooming period for wintergreen, a broadleaf evergreen with white flowers that bear red berries. St. John's wort, especially in northern climates, grows low enough for the deciduous shrub to serve as ground cover, flowering from July through September. Other summer flowering ground cover species include ice plant, snow-in-summer, plumbago -- all perennials. Virginia creeper, a lengthy vine, grows along the ground and flowers in June and July.

Deciduous Shrubs

• Clusters of white flowers as long as 24 inches during July and August highlight the thorny deciduous shrub called devil's walking stick. Keep this shrub away from paths and doorways, to avoid run-ins with the spiny branches. Sweet pepperbush, butterfly bush, rose of Sharon, bluebeard and many kinds of hydrangea shrubs bloom during all or part of the summer months. Winterberry, a form of holly that loses its leaves, flowers in July, but keeps your attention focused on it in winter by generating bright red berries that last into winter. The sumacs and rose shrubs also produce summer flowers.

Vines

• Summer flowering vines give you the option of growing your blooms vertically or horizontally. The porcelain vine is an example: it grows on trellises, porches or walls, but also sprawls along the ground to cover unsightly stumps or piles of rocks. Porcelain vine blooms during July and August. Clematis comes in many hybrid forms and blooms during the summer. Trumpet creeper, glory flowers, Carolina moonseed and moonflower are other flowering vines for the hot weather. The Japanese hydrangea vine blooms early in summer, with its white flowers able to bloom in full shade.

Trees

• Most flowering trees are spent by time summer arrives, but species like the bee bee tree, from China and Korea, provide summer blossoming. The flat-topped groups of white flowers, attractive to honey bees, give way to hanging seed pods on this 25- to 30-foot tree. The early summer flowers on a large-flowered magnolia grow to 12 inches wide, making this an attractive small ornamental tree; it only develops to 20 feet tall. June and July flowers grow in clusters resembling spikes on the maackia, a Chinese tree appropriate as a shade tree. The Franklin tree of the Southeast turns out white flowers with bright yellow centers in July and August.