Martin and Judy’s garden – and along came autumn .

Saturday September 23rd 2023, the sun shone, we drank coffee and started discussing a new planting idea.

This is the new front garden project. We are thinking fruit trees, and a perimeter hedge line of roses and soft fruits.

I worked my way through the back garden, mainly just taking in all the stunning autumnal colour and forming seed heads, whilst continuing to remove more pernicious plants as mentioned in my last blog Martin and Judy’s new garden – one year on. Judy and I were discussing what we liked about the garden, and we both decided that it was the vertical nature of a fair proportion of the planting. We also particularly like that fact, that this time last year , the garden had only just been planted up, and there was not a great deal to see , and how it is now the polar opposite !

The autumnal colour provided by Rudbeckia Prarie Glow has definitely changed since my last visit ( the first two images are from August , the lower two from yesterday) The petals have intensified in their colour , it really is glowing orange now. I find that this particular rudbeckia, is not a particularly long lived perennial, so I tend to save seed and grow it annually.

The garden is billowing with various shades of purple, provided by Aster Little Carlow and Aster Prairie Purple, I had a couple of Dahlia Merkensis spare, and donated them a couple of months ago. The second image is of this particular dahlia. This garden is definitely packing a huge amount of fabulous autumnal punch.

a long view taking in the three main planting beds

I will be back in a months time, and we will be bulb planting. I forgot to take my catalogue with me on Saturday , however Judy and I have planted hundreds and hundreds of bulbs over the years, and we do have some favourites. I know some of these will be bought and planted. So, to finish this blog here are some we planted in earlier years in Martin and Judy’s previous garden.