As summer colour fades, add some autumn hues

DON’T worry if your summer containers are now past their best because you can perk up your pots with autumn plantings that will give you colour and texture through the cooler months and beyond.

There are two approaches to autumn and winter pots, says Jeremy Hall, group plant buyer for Squire’s Garden Centres, which are holding workshops on how to create an autumn colour barrel on Friday, September 16.

“If you are a tonal person and like things in harmony, a good way of doing that is to match the colour of the flowers to the colour of the foliage you are using. Lamium with silver foliage and a pink flower would look great with the silver foliage of cyclamen.

“If you take an, ‘I like it mixed’ approach and like rustic charm, heucheras are great at giving contrast of foliage. I’d probably use two colours of heuchera together, go for a burgundy type with a bright yellow one.

“To get some flower colour in there, I’d use autumn flowering callunas (heathers) called ‘Garden Girls’, which come in a host of colours. Their buds swell, but never open, but they last ages.”

Other combinations he recommends include Ajuga ‘Black Scallop’ – very dark almost black foliage – planted with white mini cyclamen, or with the silver foliage of calocephalus.

For a traditional autumn feeling try orange pansies and viola with Ajuga ‘Burgundy Glow’, which has a pink through to burgundy foliage colour. Or go for a tonal effect by combining the ajuga with pink mini cyclamen.

“Lamium ‘Beacon Silver’ is another great subject for tonal planting. Its silver foliage edged in green is a great foil for pinks and whites.”

Permanent plantings of acid-loving plants such as azaleas will require ericaceous compost in the pot, but if you are just planting up your pots short-term to last from autumn to spring, a multi-purpose compost with added feed should suffice, he advises.

Flowering plants such as pansies and violas which bloom in autumn become dormant in the winter months, but will re-emerge and flower again in spring.

Other autumn and winter favourites, such as heathers, skimmia, ivy and other evergreens will give you at least some interest in the cooler months and if you plant some bulbs underneath them in autumn such as dwarf narcissi or muscari, they will add colour in spring.

“In our autumn barrel, we are using the miniature daffodil ‘Tete-a-tete’, which is the most popular because it’s small growing and produces three or four flowers from a single bulb from February onwards,” Hall explains.

“Bear in mind the height of the plants in the pot versus the flowering height of the bulbs you put underneath them. You can get a pleasing effect if you put tulips in which are clearly going to flower above the height of other plants. But if they are too tall it will look crazy.

“If you use a mixture of bulbs you’ll get a succession of flowers. Muscari are our second most popular, which flower just after the dwarf narcissi.”

Plant hellebores in pots in the autumn and they should give you winter interest.

“I’d recommend Helleborus niger for pots. ‘Christmas Carol’ flowers really early, as does ‘Verboom Beauty’. They will flower just before Christmas if you’re lucky and then right through to March. They prefer a slightly shadier location, but aren’t really fussy about soil.”

Put more plants in your pots when autumn-planting than you do in summer, Hall advises.

“As the day length is shortening and light intensity is not so great, the growth rate is much smaller and, other than a filling out, you won’t get plants overflowing like you do in summer.”

Good specimens for permanent containers which will provide winter interest include Choisya ternata ‘Sundance’, which gives a fabulous splash of golden yellow foliage colour followed by fragrant white flowers in mid-spring. If you want berries in winter, add Skimmia japonica subsp. ‘Reevesiana’ to your display, a small, spreading female shrub with deep green leaves which produces clusters of bright red berries in winter.

Ornamental cabbages are gaining in popularity as good breeding work has helped produce more compact plants, he points out. ‘Curly Pink’, ‘Curly White’ and ‘Curly Red’ are the most popular. They’ll last up until Christmas, although the best colour comes from them when the nights are colder and are good combined with heucheras.

Ornamental grasses such as pennisetums are also gaining popularity, their seedheads giving soft, wispy movement to containers and will come back year after year. Combine them with violas, hedera and callunas for further colour, he suggests.

For more information on Squire’s Gardening Workshop to create your own autumn colour barrel visit www.squiresgardencentres.co.uk

GOOD ENOUGH TO EAT: POTATOES FOR CHRISTMAS

IF YOU have a greenhouse, growing your own spuds in pots for Christmas is pretty easy, but you need to start now.

Use a container at least 30cm deep and wide with drainage holes in the base.

Add a layer of potting compost mixed with garden compost around 10cm thick for 30cm deep pots and plant one to three tubers per pot, each with around 30cm of space.

Cover them with 15cm of compost.

As the foliage develops, earth up the potatoes with further compost until the pot is full to within 5cm of the top, leaving a lip to aid watering.

Keep the pot well watered and feed with a general purpose liquid feed. Keep the greenhouse frost-free as the season develops.

The foliage should die down in late autumn and can be removed.

The tubers can be left in the pots until needed during the festive season.

BEST OF THE BUNCH: BUGBANE (CIMICFUGA)

THESE unusual perennials which flower from July to September have white or cream flower heads that look like bottle brushes and elegant foliage.

They are sturdy and easy to grow in a cool, moist position such as by a pond and are best left undisturbed once planted.

Use them as a background plant to vivid phlox.

You can also get purple-leaved bugbanes which are good plant partners for late aconitums or golden-leaved grass such as Hakonechloa macra ‘Aureola’.

WHAT TO DO THIS WEEK

• Spring-clean the greenhouse if you’ve finished harvesting summer crops
• Keep brassicas covered to protect them from pigeons
• Buy a compost bin as so much autumn debris can be added to it this month
• Continue to plant spring bulbs including daffodils, snowdrops and crocuses
• Stop feeding permanent plants growing in containers
• If you’re going to plant forced hyacinth bulbs for Christmas, do it now
• Carry out lawn repairs, mending bald patches or sorting out bumps and hollows
• Prune repeat or continuous-flowering old-fashioned shrub and species roses
• If the ground is soft enough, move evergreen shrubs and conifers which have outgrown their allotted space
• Sow overwintering onions in vacant rows in the veg plot.
• Train and prune cane fruits including loganberries and tayberries