Anemone Honorine Jobert

Autumn is my favourite season. What’s not to love about Anemone flowers, and their gorgeous bobble like seed heads ?

Autumn brings the tail end of perennials flowering. But, if you choose wisely your garden can be brimming with stunning seed heads, intense foliage colour, sturdy perennial stems and arching ornamental grasses. All of which makes for an emotionaly charged and “achingly beautiful” garden experience.

I hope you enjoy the autumnal beauty of the following images, which I see on a regular basis in customers and my own garden.

If borders need extending, now is a really good time. Over the last fifteen years, I have literally dug up hundreds of square metres worth of lawn to make larger planting beds. I turn the turf upside down, cutting it into small chunks. It will break down naturally over winter, and will be ready to plant up in spring.

I have to constantly remind myself that these are not my gardens. If a customer says “no ” to an idea that involves less lawn and more planting, that’s how it is. If I was given free reign I would extend the planting beds as close to all the properties as is practically possible !

I would also like to make pathways through customers flower borders, so they too can walk right upto the tallest of the perennials at the back of the borders, and experience the gorgeous flowers that I regularly see as I care for their gardens. Sadly, not one of my customers has taken me up on this offer…

Inside a border looking up through Helianthus lemon queen and spent daisy flowers

My garden is filled with annuals, perennials and ornamental grasses which reach right to the fabric of our home. This means that even on a wet day, when I am looking out of the window, I still feel I am outside and amongst the plants, which provides me with great joy.

Autumn, finds me making to do lists…

Asters due to their height have keeled over in several gardens recently. Next year I will use the ornamental grass Miscanthus sinensis Morning light to provide support. I intend to divide it up in spring. and plant it among the Asters. If I did this now, the offsets would end up just sitting in cold soil, which would not be beneficial to their health and longevity.

By leaving this job till early April the soil will be warming up for the growing season and the newly made offsets will settle in and grow away quickly to provide a natural support.

Hopefully by growing through Miscanthus, the Asters will not collapse next year

Every couple of years I like to divide perennials up, as it helps to increase a plants flowering capacity. I just ran out of time to do this job in spring, and the Shasta daisy Phyllis Smith did not flower quite as well as in previous years.

Last week I remedied this by digging out the congested centre. I now have a gap, and will either drop in the towering and statuesque Veronicastrum or Ammi majus seed in the spring, or maybe the towering annual Tithonia rotundifolia The Torch.

I dug out the unproductive woody growth,

Anemone x hybrida Honorine Jobert , is struggling to get going in one garden. This is due to the invasive, mat like forming root system of a white Aster. To remedy this, vast swathes of the advancing Aster have been dug out. Hopefully Honorine Jobert will be much happier next year.

Anemone, with white Aster in the background…

In early September I divided up Veronicastrum virginicum Fascination and moved Euphorbia seedlings around in one garden. Both of these plants provide great winter presence – Veronicastrum with its sturdy stem, and Euphorbia with its evergreen structure. As we are now heading into mid October I wouldn’t choose to do this now – the soil is getting too cold and wet for offsets to settle in .

With Euphorbia, I do find that transplanting young self setters can be a little tricky, unless you replant them immediately, and keep them well watered. Due to working in gardens weekly, they have a tendency to not survive. I would think its down to the tap root system, drying out.