August is an excellent month to plant heat-tolerant perennials, ornamental grasses, and late-blooming flowers, provided you water them deeply while they establish. Choose plants with immediate presence such as coneflower, black-eyed Susan, sedum, and salvia, and your backyard can look more abundant now while gaining structure and color for fall.
The trick is to plant early in the day, prepare generous planting holes, and keep the root balls reliably moist for their first few weeks. August gardening is less a sprint than a campaign conducted with a hose.
