colour

I make no apology for writing about colour again. Autumn is definitely here, you can smell the dampness and sharpness of the morning air and feel the texture of the soil changing. As my boots found out today, I think I grew an inch in height.

I would consider that it is far better to let your garden ride out the end of Summer with a true blast of colour, rather than fizzle out, in a sad shade of botrytis grey. I am on my continual horticultural mission to make all the gardens in my care have such a final blast, some are really getting there, and are presently experiencing a sea of Asters, Helianthus, Salvias, Rudbeckias and Alstromerias and anything else I can think of to pack a punch.

However using colour subtlety is also a skill – you cannot go far wrong with masses of Autumn crocus and a blanket of cyclamen .

My own garden is doing its own thing and is presently experiencing a shocking state of red, pink and orange at the moment.

One friend said to me, oh my garden is so over, and what are you going to do know until next year ? Internally I was thinking well you should have employed me as your gardener, and then you would be raving about the colour spectrum I had helped to create. I just said yes, it is all a bit over now, time to try other things to scrape a living as a gardener. I took to making giant door garlands last year. One was so big, it had to have its outer layer removed to enable the owner to open and close their door.

My leonits is in full orange glow mode at the moment – I recently read that it is a tender perennial, so a bit of cosseting will hopefully enable it to come through the winter – hope so, as it has taken 3 failed years to get to this stage. I could not bear the thought of having managed it once, and once only.

It really made me laugh. John and I occasionally work together on gardening projects. Last week we were weeding and strimming and undertaking other various heavy duty gardening tasks in what I would consider to be a magnificent garden in rather a super spot of Shropshire. All of a sudden a B.T engineer arrived, I explained we were the gardeners, his comment was “well you didn’t look like you owned this place” Probably had something to do with the fact that I was no doubt sporting the latest twig hair extensions. John looked like he had undertaken a marathon whilst holding a petrol hedge cutter we looked unkempt to say the least.