Hi, where are you located? That might help people with suggestions. Silver falls dichondra sounds pretty easy to grow and not too fussy. I had verbena in containers and in a west-facing bed last year and it still looked okay in September. (Petunias, on the other hand, had pretty much had it from the heat and humidity.) Lemon grass is a tall grass that's also very pretty and likes the sun. Not sure what it looks like in September though. I wouldn't combine any of these with astilbe, as it likes shade. For best results, I would find a high quality nursery where you live and talk to a staffer who has worked there for a long time. I would plant more containers than you need to give yourself a bit of a safety net; I would also recruit a friend with experience with container gardening to provide some guidance with watering and fertilizing. My wedding was in late Sept 04 in TN and pretty much all we could find in bloom at the time were chrysanthemums. We ended up just using a great local florist who handled everything. However we were planning things long distance and early September should be easier. I hope it works out!

It's difficult to give recommendations without knowing your zone or seasonal growing conditions, but I would strongly urge you to try growing a variety of annuals and reliably "quick" perennials this year. It sounds like you don't have any gardens in place now, so use this year to experiment and practice. Even if you put in perennials this year for bloom next year, the plants will probably not be what you hope for (depending on your growing conditions). I'm in zone 5, and everything is at least a week early for me this year. My yard is currently flush with forget-me-nots and violets. Bleeding Heart and Primrose are flush with blooms. Centaurea Montana is starting to bloom, as are my earliest bearded iris. My lilacs are just about in full bloom now. Soon I'll have lily of the valley blooming, Dame's Rocket, tons of peonies, ... May is beautiful and very fragrant here! My June-bloomers will be tons more bearded iris and siberian iris, poppies, sweet william, asiatic lilies, matricaria, campanulas, honeysuckle vine, trollius, and so on. Plants with great foliage are beautiful and really light up shady areas -- I love to mix and contrast foliage colors, textures, shapes, and heights. I use a lot of hostas, heucheras, ferns, etc... and it's easy to tuck in annual impatiens to brighten dark spots.

Valerian is one that blooms like mad in June. White tall flower spikes and very fragrant. Lilac bushes bloom in june, kousa dogwoods bloom white and pink. Some rhodies in june, and in early june many fruit trees. The yellow perennials bloom mostly in late summer, sorry to say. You might be able to buy dahlias in pots that are already in bloom, and those come in yellows. All the best. Jim

I am sure you can make a wonderful contribution to the wedding, but I wouldn't do table arrangements, if I were you. I am now professionally trained as a floral designer and have been growing flowers and greens for make at home arrangements and I would not even take that on, especially not in September, when so many flowers and greens will be struggling from the heat. Don't forget if you want to enjoy the wedding, you would have make the arrangements ahead of time which means conditioning flowers and greens and then cool storing the arrangements. Now if you are talking something more countrified than formal arrangements than you could certainly throw zinnias and some other flowers in something like iced tea glasses and it would be really cute. You could also use potted plants as centerpieces. You could make up "arrangements" with the potted plants well ahead of time so you wouldn't be time pressed like you would with fresh-cut flowers. You could even buy annuals inexpensively at a garden center while they are in bloom and then plant them afterward. Or let the guests take them home and plant them. When I got married 7 years ago, in November I wasn't professionally trained but I still wanted to decorate my own backyard wedding "garden" wedding. I used a florist for the actual table arrangements but then also did a lot myself. I grew roses in pots. Roses can be pruned in order to force them to bloom at the right time, although September blooms wont be spectacular. I used the potted roses on both ends of the aisle. In addition to the formal centerpieces, I themed each table as a different herb, (My tables names were rosemary, sage, thyme etc.) I spray painted little clay pots to match my linens and then grew the herbs in them. Of course for a September wedding you would either have to grow some of the herbs inside or have less choices since so many herbs wont make it through the hot summer. The other thing I did was place a long stem rose in each napkin. In order not to take chances, and because I wanted to keep my roses on the bushes, I ordered them straight from a grower, and just had to cut off the thorns and they were ready to grow. Grower's roses smell so much better than florist roses. I got them from 2groses.com. Hope this helps. Let me know if I can provide any more info. Michelle