September Colour
Colour in the garden in September
Autumn doesn’t just have to be about autumn leaves, it is possible to continue to use flowers as a foil to the spent foliage around them. A lot will depend on when the first frosts hit your area (here, as early as 31 August or as late as October) but in sheltered areas of the garden, the mild days of September create the perfect environment for late perennials and tender annuals to flourish.
To show you what I mean here are some pictures of the gardens in September that might offer inspiration for your garden.
First up, what happens if you don’t plant for late colour. Here are the terraces. All the colour is drained from them and it is just the picturesque seed heads that remain. This is what happens to our native plants if they are not cut down and nothing is added. We will make hay once the final seeds are ripe.
The seed heads of wild carrot are particularly interesting and make the perfect shape for spiders to hang their webs off on a dewy morning.
Adding colour
The light is great now so adding some colour makes all this decay a lot more interesting.
In the long borders, asters and rudbeckias are particularly useful. This is the perennial Rudbeckia fulgida with Agastache ‘Black Adder’ in the foreground. The purple spires are putting out their final flowers of the season and are given a lift by the yellow daisies behind.
Dahlias are excellent too for late summer colour. We use yellow ‘California Sunset’ in the long borders (see them giving the borders a lift in the photo above) but anything we like in the Pickery. Here is a new colour scheme which is giving us great satisfaction.
This is Dahlia ‘Preference’ with Pennisetum orientale ‘Karley Rose’. On the other side of the path is an exquisite arrangement of Dahlia ‘Wizard of Oz’ with a Chrysanthemum called ‘Pink Danielle.’
It took me a while to be convinced of the value of grasses in an English garden but there are certain varieties that don’t make you feel like you have stumbled into a prairie and these tend to blend beautifully with big late flowers.
Cut Flowers
The cut flower beds in the pickery are still bursting with colour. They provide interest and lots of flowers for the tea room, history room and coach house. Here we consider the overall effect as well as their usefulness in flower arrangements.
This sunflower is ‘Earthwalker’ which is a branching annual with lots of classic sunflower shaped heads, unusual chestnut and gold petals and dark chocolate seed heads – these will be very popular with the goldfinches next month. The white phlox is late this year, it decides for itself whether to flower in high summer or autumn.
A similar colour scheme is achieved by bedding out pockets of annuals in the cottage garden. This is a white Ageratum with the humble double marigold. In the background, Dahlia ‘Red Honka’ shines against the light. See how it lifts the papery seed heads of the long-spent honesty. Although these are in the cottage garden, everything you see in flower here is excellent in a vase.
Another faithfully good annual and cut flower for this time of year is Cleome. The light creates translucent petals in pinks, mauves or whites and the intriguing seed heads add interest later on.
Repeat flowering
The roses throughout the gardens are reinvigorated after deadheading and some of them like Rosa ‘Grace’, ‘Lady of Shalott’ ‘Graham Thomas’ and ‘The Mayflower’ are in flower again.
The roses aren’t alone, some clematis are still flowering. Our success with clematis is variable but one or two are now becoming reliable additions to our garden. Here is Clematis jackmanii in one of four pots on the cherry plat.
Containers
The pots around the pickery, cottage garden and tearoom are at their peak. Plectranthus of various types and coleus make huge vases of silver and deep red matt leaves. The solidity of the pots is lightened by red and white stars of flowers (Zinnia ‘Red Spider’ and Gaura lindheimerii respectively) and by Petunia exserta whose orange-red flowers peak out from below the foliage.
If you would like to take a virtual tour of the gardens in September, click here.