Autumn Fires: How to Create A Garden That’s Ablaze With Autumn Colour
Autumn can be something of a forgotten season in the garden with attention focused more on bulb planting for glorious spring displays or planting to improve the following summer. But, with a little planning, autumn can be one of the most colourful and exciting times of all to enjoy just for itself.
Garden owner and plantswoman, Sarah Pajwani, shares her thoughts on the best way to create a blaze of autumn colour in the garden, by sharing her top five tips that give her garden at St Timothee in Berkshire colour right through the season.
1- Use Fast Growing & Hardy Shrubs
When I think of autumn, I think of walks in woods and of yellows, oranges, reds and browns – but rich, warm and mellow so more saffron, sienna, crimson and russet. These are the colours I try to include in my planting. There are usually plenty of browns from decaying perennials and lots of green from the grass but dialling up the reds and yellows gives energy and impact to the borders. And the biggest colour impact in my garden comes from some amazing shrubs – all of which are fast growing and reliably hardy, tough plants.
- Cotinus Coggygria Royal Purple – purple foliage in summer which turns a fiery, deep red in November.
- Cornuses. Loved for their vibrant, bare stem brilliance in winter, they in fact start their performance in autumn with red stemmed Cornus Alba Sibiricaturning a wonderful mix of colours from green through yellow to a deep wine red.
- Probably my favourite shrub of all is the wonderful Cornus Midwinter Fire. Bright lime green foliage throughout summer that turns a glorious butter yellow from late September and often lasts right until the end of November.
- Cotoneaster Horizontalis. With bright red berries in September, changing jewel-like leaf colour in October before its final fling of fiery red foliage in November, there are not many shrubs that give so much.
2- Repeat What Works
Not only does it make life a good deal easier by repeating plants that like your soil and conditions, but it gives a sense of cohesion to the garden and helps draw the eye on and around your space.
All of the above shrubs I use many, many times. In the circular beds I call 'The Big Circle', I have six of these Cotinus. With Cornus Midwinter Fire, I’ve used it en masse as a hedge to become the backdrop for two island beds.
3- Echo Colours at Different Levels
In the view below, my eye is drawn to the fiery red of the Cotinus at the far back, but it’s helped towards this by several other spots of russet and most notably by Heuchera Chocolate Ruffles, a valuable front-of-border evergreen that lines part of the curved path. Echoing colours at different levels with different plants is another way to give cohesion and balance and to lead your eye around the garden.
4- Contrast red & yellow for maximum impact
Where the Big Circle border meets the Midwinter Fire borders, the fiery red of the Cotinus is backed by the bright yellow of the Cornus. By late November, when most of the trees have lost all their foliage, this combination brings some much-needed vibrancy and warmth.
5- Aim to create pleasing scenes
My main concern in the garden is to look at something I see as pleasing. I don’t use many unusual plants. Instead, I rely on the mix of colours, shapes, textures, and layers to form what I see as pleasing scenes.
Four massive Pampas (three visible below and a fourth to the far left) form a dramatic backdrop to the pond. They help lift the eye to the trees and to the beautiful butter yellow of the Liriodendrum Tulip tree. The colour of the tree is then echoed lower down by the line of yellow from the Cornus Midwinter Fire hedge. So, in this scene I’ve dialled up the yellow with the Cornus, repeated both the Pampas and the Cornus and echoed colour at different levels.
I hope this gives an idea of some of the plants and planting that I love in my garden in autumn. For any keen gardener, it feels a shame not to be trying to squeeze joy from every day and every season.
