Autumn, Is your garden filling you with visual joy and wonderment, and proudly holding itself together, rather than sliding into an early demise?
Sadly, if the latter is your answer, there are a few simple ways to help turn this into your favourite season.
Choose plants that possess sturdy stems, seed heads, and great autumn colour (both in flower and foliage). Fallen birch leaves with black sedge, Japanese anemones, Perovskia with Nepeta govaniana never fail to stop me in my tracks. How zingy is this Kniphofia Mango Suprise?
Why not grow some annuals? Sunflowers continue to billow out of my veg bed. ( I knew it would be impossible to keep it just for edible crops). I read that their stems if peeled taste like cucumber, as much I love cucumbers I think I will keep the sunflowers for ornamentals.
Grow some Dahlias, a single packet of seeds has produced a vast amount of cut flowers for my kitchen windowsill.
Gardens in my care tend to be mixed perennial, tree and shrub borders, and as much as I am happy with how they look in September it is time to move them on
I am particularly interested in Piet Oudolf’s “new perennial movement” and Nigel Dunnett’s exquisite naturalistic immersive planting designs. I want to see if I can somehow incorporate their planting styles into smaller scale domestic gardens, (rather than the large public landscapes which they are associated with). I know It is definitely a project I will thoroughly enjoying experimenting with.
For instance, I donated pheasants grass from my own garden a year ago. I am really happy with the result due to the colour density of the Iris seed heads, plus the Sedum flowers are practically the same tone as the delicate grasses stems. (This block of planting is less than a metre square)
What other changes have I started making? Last winter I planted bare root silver birch, Amelanchiers, Hydrangeas, fruit trees, and species roses (rosa glauca) within borders in my care. This will help to increase year round structural interest, making the gardens far more visually interesting through the entire year.
I divided a large clump of the variegated grass Miscanthus Morning light and Veronicastrum virginicum Fascination. They are now in blocks set at 3 metre spacings on either side of a previously predominantly herbaceous double border. They have added structure and regular rhythm as you walk past. Alliums run through the entire border.
A word of caution with multicoloured handled tools, never put them down in the garden… (particularly in autumn) I really did lose them for a frantic five minutes.
I
Sally Wicks 
I couldn’t suppress a giggle at the camouflaged kit! I get many ideas from your blog, Wicksy but the green-eyed monster raises its head whenever I read such as “gardens far more visually interesting through the entire year. My garden spends at least 4 months buried in one meter of snow so anything ‘visually’ would result in blindness.
I’m going to push the dahlias next season. My poppies have been wonderful this year and I’m presuming that they will come back next. I’ve been popping the crisp brown sedd heads and letting the contents simply drop.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yes, camouflaged indeed. Seriously Jon, you could plant some trees for better structure, maybe not white barked birch though… they would seriously disappear in all your snow. It has been an amazing year for Dahlias. All from seed from “Sarah Raven”
LikeLike
Interesting and enjoyable post. I try to purchase secateurs; towels etc in bright colours so they don’t get lost but they just play tricks on me.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thankyou Linda. I almost lost a green handled garden hand fork in the compost heap last week …
LikeLike