Jewel colours in the autumn garden – typically red, gold, yellow and purple – intermingle with the pinks, blues and whites of late summer, which in turn often carry on to the first of the frosts.
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Late flowering fuchsias come into their own at this time of year including the hardy border shrub Fuchsia magellanica, whose small red and purple lowers are borne profusely on slender arching stems.
The summer pinks and blues of hydrangeas invariably dry on the bush to deep red or pale green – fillers for a vase. Purple or white colchicums, an autumn crocus, fit well into a bed of the ground cover Geranium macrorrhizum that will cover their bare stems.
Vibrant or even subtle colours of dahlias in their numerous forms are outstanding in late summer/early autumn gardens. Monet’s garden at Giverny is well known for its display of dark red dahlias rising from a sea of cosmos, matching the pink façade of the house.
Commonly grown as an annual, pastel coloured cosmos offers good value as a tall summer bedding plant and cut flower. The dark red, better known as the chocolate cosmos from the scent of the flowers, is somewhat more exotic but easily grown from seed in relatively poor soil.
Heliopsis is another plant that copes with poor soil and drought conditions. Flower colour varies between yellow and orange – seldom in need of staking or problems with pests and disease.
Rudbeckia, the North American coneflower, has daisy-like flowerheads with drooping yellow or orange rays around a central cone-shaped disc. Some cultivars are double flowered, all are easy to grow and best divided every four years or so in spring.
Easter daisies – asters in the Southern hemisphere (Michaelmas daisies in the North) – are a must in the autumn garden where their pinks, reds and blues extend the summer colours of agapanthus, petunias and begonias.
Size ranges for front of the border to back of the bed stalwarts growing from 1-2m. Cultivated varieties are invariably vigorous in growth and will require lifting and dividing every two to three years.
Every aster lover can name a favourite from the early flowering almost red ‘Winston Churchill’, perhaps the fully double pink ‘Patricia Ballard’ or the campanula-blue Aster frikartii – free branching and flowering over three months.
One of the best of the later flowering perennials for the lightly shaded border, where the soil remains reasonably moist, is the Japanese anemone or windflower. Flower forms vary from single to fully double in white through shell pink to deep rose.
