Autumn colours

What a glorious autumn we are experiencing, the leaf colour seems better than ever this year and is lasting for weeks.    Admittedly some trees in the garden have dropped all their leaves, notably three large oaks, but leaves on many of the other trees and shrubs are hanging on.   We’ve had a few frosty mornings and high winds but generally the weather is milder than usual and when the sun is out (even if only for an hour or two) it casts a lovely golden light over the whole garden.   Looking out of the window now the over-riding leaf colour is yellow going through to shades of brown (and who knew brown could be so beautiful), although there is still plenty of green in the form of lilac, forsythia and wisteria leaves apart from the evergreen yew and box.  Various acers have provided splashes of brilliant red along with deep red leaves of Viburnum plicatum.    I have just raked up a ‘builder’s sack’ of dark muddy brown leaves from underneath the dogwoods in the orchard,  partly to give the grass underneath chance to grow and also to allow the beautiful red stems of Cornus alba Westonbirt to stand out in the autumn sunshine.  Many sackfuls of leaves from the oak trees have been raked up from the lawn and put into the leaf bin to rot down into leafmould.   Those from the dogwoods will follow – when someone stronger than me can help pull the sack out of the orchard!  The beech hedge along the boundary between the garden and the lane is turning yellowy/brown and perfectly sets off the holly trees on the other side of the lane that are absolutely laden with glossy red berries.   Luckily I enjoy gently raking leaves for an hour or so, I think I will be occupied for a while yet.    I have the benefit of a shiny new rake which seems to work well and unlike the old one isn’t too heavy to manhandle.    Power tools will be employed by others to chase leaves out from under shrubs and from tricky corners around outbuildings, but I am content to do the job the peaceful way!  Even better if there is a toasted teacake and cup of tea to look forward to at the end of it!

Aside from leaf raking this is a favourite time of year to embark on major changes to the garden.  One such change being the removal of a flower bed running parallel to the lane behind the beech hedge.   This flowerbed has been the bane of my life for the last couple of years.   I have now given up and conceded defeat to the bindweed and perennial helianthus that had taken over.    Everything has been dug out, apart from Prunus incisa Kojo-no-mai, a small tree beautiful in all seasons, the ground has been flattened, rolled and turf has been laid.    The gravel path that ran alongside the flowerbed and which I thought was a complete waste of time – no one ever walked on it – has also been turfed and the whole area looks much better.   The idea being that regular mowing will keep at bay the helianthus and the bindweed will be easier to spot and remove as it pushes through the beech hedge.   That’s one job completed, next major one is sorting out a flowerbed near the house that has some lovely plants growing and too much not so lovely couch grass.

Late flowers are also providing colour.   Asters are still flowering and I love them, but at this time of year my favourites are Chrysanthemums.   The Emperor of China has a lovely silvery pink flower that  comes out at the beginning of November.   It is really tall and the trick is to keep it well staked so that the flowers don’t drag on the ground.  Another looking good now is Dulwich Pink, which I have obtained from the Hardy Plant Society Conservation Scheme.   It is a lovely plant again flowering late and deserves to be more widely grown.   We’ve planted many and various ornamental grasses over the last few years and these will continue to look good into the winter.  Many herbaceous plants are now teetering on the edge of being acceptable.    Whilst they still bear seeds I will leave them, what a treat to see blue tits and longtailed tits balancing precariously on Solidago seed heads,  however once the seed heads are empty I will cut them down.   I’m not a huge fan of blackening foliage spreading over the flower beds.  Whilst we do get very severe frosts here we never seem to enjoy the frost encrusted seed heads that gardening books tell us about.   Of course the next job after cutting down the herbaceous foliage will be mulching the borders with garden compost.   And so the work continues……