Plants for Autumn Colour in the Garden

This season of mists and mellow fruitfulness can be a bit damp and dreary, but its saving grace is a flurry of spectacular leaf colour as trees get ready to shed their leaves for winter.  Here are some of my suggestions for creating a fiery farewell to your summer garden

Most Acers have great autumn foliage colours, but I love watching plain green Acer palmatum dissectum light up in the latter part of the year. 

Euonymus alatus is a wonderful shrub with a layered outline and interesting stems with lateral projections.  It really comes into its own with spectacular fiery autumn foliage earning it the common name of ‘Burning Bush’.  It also has lovely, delicate fruits that the birds feed on through the winter.

Callicarpa bodinerii is notable not for its colourful foliage, but for the clumps of gorgeous bright violet fruits that decorate its bare stems throughout the winter.

Cornus kousa is a fantastic tree for many reasons, not least of which is its deep burgundy red autumn colour. 

Rhus typhina is not a fashionable plant, but you can’t beat it for gorgeous flaming autumn tints.

Ginkgo biloba is a wonderful tree and its lemon yellow autumn foliage is unique and extremely impactful.  If you have the space it’s a must.

Parrotia persica is another spectacular tree with pinkish red flowers on bare stems in late winter/early spring, then lush green leaves throughout the summer that turn yellow, red, orange and purple in the autumn it's a real star. 

Liquidambar styraciflua is a fabulous tree with cork like bark and leaves rather like a maple.  It is renowned for it's deliciously coloured autumn foliage. 

If you would like help designing your garden, please drop me an email, or visit my Web site for telephone contact details.  You can also see examples of my work on my Facebook page and Houzz profile.

Garden Design Buckinghamshire

This garden surrounds a new Passivhaus in Chalfont St Giles, Buckinghamshire.  The garden is one acre of a 3-acre plot in a rural location.  The client is building a new Passivhaus and wanted a garden with a large outdoor entertaining space, and an interesting garden that blends the house with its surroundings.

Before

The garden is designed as a series of sweeping curves that loosely enclose large outdoor rooms for various purposes.  A self-binding gravel path winds around the perimeter creating a dry route round the whole garden.  

 

 Master Plan

A circular evening entertaining space with a large fire pit at the rear of the garden is enclosed by a sculpted earth mound finished with wildflower turf and entered through a moon gate.

3-D View - Whole Garden

The large terrace immediately adjacent to the back of the house has a full outdoor kitchen with stainless steel cupboards, an outdoor fridge, a built-in grill and sink and a bar.  Attached to the terrace there is a circular seating area with built-in benches, a contemporary steel pergola and a central fireplace table.  

3-D View - Terrace & Kitchen

Planting will be a blend of wildlife friendly herbaceous borders, shrubs and trees to ensure the  garden blends with its surroundings and sets the new house into its plot.  

 3-D View -Down Garden from House

Enclosed by the gravel paths two small side gardens provide intimate spaces to relax and enjoy the view of the larger garden.  One of these smaller spaces has been designed to include bee hives and planting suitable for bees and other pollinating insects.  

3-D View -  Through Moon Gate Up Garden

In future the design will be expanded into the remaining two acres to include an orchard, and spaces suitable for keeping small animals.  The idea will be to create a garden that is  beautiful and productive as well as fun to spend time in. 

 3-D View - House & Terrace

If you would like help designing your garden, please drop me an email, or visit my Web site for telephone contact details.  You can also see examples of my work on my Facebook page and Houzz profile.

Front Garden Bracknell, Berkshire

As autumn encloses us in it's chilly mists here's a nostalgic trip around my front garden in Bracknell, Berkshire.

All around me  people are understandably sacrificing their front gardens for parking, but I am holding fast to the sunniest spot on my plot to create a unapologetic burst of blowsy colour from late spring right into the early autumn.

I love this small Eryngium bourgatii 'Picos Amethyst' - it's the perfect edging plant in a sunny spot. I've planted it next to some soft Stachys byzantina and a gorgeous purple Salvia verticillata 'Purple Rain' which flowers all summer long.

Another pretty combination is this Catananche cerulea which is also long flowering with this pale pink mallow Sidalcea 'Elsie Heugh'. The eagle eyed amongst you will spot Brunnera 'Jack Frost' a shade lover that exists fairly happily in full sun and provides a lovely silver foil for the taller plants.

 

The view from the front door shows the perennial borders, the central lavender border around a beautiful small tree Cercis chinensis 'Avondale' - a shrubby relative of the better known Cercis siliquastrum or Judas tree.  

Not all Euonymus are created equal. I inherited a couple of Euonymus japonicus with the garden and kept them but over time have clipped them into shapes - this gold variegated one is the perfect anchor for all the fluffier perennial plants.

Long flowering Knautia macedonia pops it's head through Verbascum  chaxii 'Album' and Veronicastrum 'Apollo' (just about to flower) - it's a gem of a plant flowering on long stems from early summer right through into the winter.

My perennial borders are stuffed with plants that jostle for space in this small front garden. I'm afraid it's a case of do what I say not do what I do in this case even though the result is gratifying.

If you would like help designing your garden, please drop me an email, or visit my Web site for telephone contact details.  You can also see examples of my work on my Facebook page and Houzz profile.