The best heat- and drought-proof flowers that will keep you in blooms over the approaching scorching summer are the floribunda or groundcover rose bushes you planted 15 years ago, that have had time to grow big roots, or the clumps of Russian sage you cleverly established five years ago with its spires of blue flowers, the buddleia or "butterfly bush" planted five years ago and watered and kept weeded, or the purple bougainvillea planted 20 years ago so it has now grown out of frost reach. The "flowers" are really bracts, but let's not go into that.
If you decided to live dangerously a decade or more ago and planted an oleander bush or hedge, even though all parts of the bush are extremely toxic to humans and pets, its red, pink or white blooms will be almost indestructible despite the heat. There's one Canberra courtyard planted with oleander in memory of a hedge in Crete that kept an Aussie soldier safe from German fire for more than a week. Thanks to those oleanders and the neighbouring Cretan farmer's family, he eventually escaped. The farm's kitchen wall is papered in Australian postcards and both garden's oleanders bloom red every summer.
Almost any of the tall or groundcover sages in blue, red, orange, gold or purple will also keep flowering all summer, autumn and into winter with no watering at all. The leaves may look limp, but there'll be blooms - and you will have flowers to enjoy and pick all summer long, no matter what the weather throws at us as long as it isn't hail or flames.
If you, your landlord or the previous owner have not provided you with established, deep-rooted flowering shrubs, you need to do some planting - now, before a burst of summer heat shrivels seedlings.
The most prolific summer flowers are annuals. Annuals are a nuisance. You need to plant them in spring so you get your money's worth; make sure the snails don't eat them - place snail bait in lengths of polypipe or old ice-cream containers with a snail door cut in the side.
You'll need to water the seedlings every two or three days until established, and at least once a week after that, or even three times a week after blazing summer days; fertilise them every month or so to encourage more flowers, mulch them to keep down weeds till they are large enough to outcompete weeds themselves, then pull them out when the cold weather or first frost kills them.
Prepared to do all that? Then here are the toughest annuals of all. They are not quite guaranteed to keep the summer floriferous if it's as hot and dry as everyone predicts.
Want a cheerful "bright and gaudy" garden? Choose zinnias. They come in just about every colour except black and pale blue. Go for red, orange, yellow and magenta zinnias and low-flying aircraft will probably be able to spot your garden bed glowing up among the rooftops.
For a slightly less bright but just as strident "look at moi!" effect, choose the multicoloured ones, especially those with stripes or spots.
You can even be restrained and elegant with zinnias, and keep to white, cream or a rather lovely soft green.
Zinnias do need to be dead-headed after flowering. They will also need a weekly water, and a monthly dose of fertiliser, or slow-release fertiliser added at planting, the kind that won't release tucker till the temperature is high enough for plant growth.
Possibly the best "survive anything" flower in our summer climate is cosmos. The pink, white or purple flowers bloom whenever the weather is warm to hot. They don't even need feeding: too much tucker means fewer flowers and more foliage.
I'm going to whisper the next one: marigolds. Tall, medium or short; yellow, bronze or orange, they smell like a sweaty armpit after a lunch of onions and garlic.
I hate the things. Despite advice to the contrary, they do not repel aphids, but attract them, and slightly inhibit the growth of plants around them, including many weeds which is why the gardeners who tended the public parks of my childhood loved them. Every park had a faint odour of marigold.
But marigolds are unquestionably bright. They are hardy. They will bloom all summer with very little water. Just don't take them inside or your living room will slowly smell of marigold too.
There are many other choices, but all the ones I can think of won't bloom till closer to mid-summer. Dahlias tubers planted now will bloom before Christmas, and keep going till autumn cools. Usually I'd recommend planting the seeds of single dahlias now: dahlia seedlings are fast growing, and will bloom almost as fast as the tubers. Meanwhile they will be growing their own tubers, and will bloom year after year for decades. But dahlia seedlings will need watering and weeding, and snail eradication too.
"Spreading" petunias are a summer garden staple for front yards, public spaces or hanging baskets. They are often sniffed at for being common, but they are common for a reason: they are hardy and give flower after flower. Once again, they do need feeding.
Californian poppies will bloom gloriously, as long as summer is early. They need more heat than we often get to bloom at the beginning of summer, so usually don't bloom till mid-season, but if this spring is as unseasonably warm as winter has been, you may be lucky. The old-fashioned bright orange ones seem the most hardy, but Californian poppies also come in red, pink, white, and my favourite, a soft rose colour.
Nasturtiums also need more heat than our springs and early summer provides, but again, this year may be different. An aside: I had my first proposal of marriage in a nasturtium patch. We had been sucking the nectar from the long spurs at the back of the flowers when he proposed, then we went in to tell his mum, as she took a sponge cake out of the oven. She seemed quite pleased that her son had settled his future at the age of five. Sadly we moved away soon after.
Despite that happy memory among the orange nasturtiums - it was a delicious sponge cake -I love red nasturtiums best. The flowers are also edible, but have the texture of thinly sliced sponges - the bathroom kind, not the cakes.
I'm not sure yet what we will plant in our two front garden beds this year. Most of the room is already taken up by dahlias and Federation daises, but in a dry summer the wallabies will eat the dahlias - in a good year they just guzzle the flower buds. There must be annuals that wallabies don't eat, even in drought years, but I haven't found them yet. Luckily we should have some blooms.
The local wallabies may pull down the salvia stems to eat the flowers, but they don't seem to like Federation daisies. Yet.
