Garden Centre

Sunday, October 28, 2007

Autumn leaves and water ...

Isn’t this gorgeous? It’s St Stephen’s Green, where the ducks hang out, and this one area, with the burgundy foliage reflected in the water, was quite superb. It reminded me that for most of us this kind of expanse isn’t possible – eighty foot trees on the banks of lakes don’t really fit into our gardens – but there are plenty of ways to try and achieve foliage and water effects:

If you have a small specimen tree, like a maple say, plant it on a bank behind your pond so that it reflects in the water.

If you have larger trees, particularly beeches or birches, you can give them ‘temporary’ water. My favourite device is to drag the old kiddies paddling pool under them and fill it with water, it reflects the trees beautifully and (taking a leaf out of Merry Hall, the book written by my gardening hero, Beverley Nichols) we can make ‘artificial’ floating flowers – small yellow chrysanthemum heads floating on red or brown fallen leaves for example, or individual nerine blossoms laid alongside the leaves of variegated dogwood (cornus) to give a nice blend of pink, white and green. They look wonderful and give a focus point to the reflections in the water.

And if you can’t manage even that, find a bird bath that isn’t too heavy and position it under a tree with autumn foliage – you won’t get much of a reflection, but it’s a lot better than nothing.

Labels: autumn colour, autumn foliage, birdbaths, garden ponds

The All Seasons Gardener at 3:02 AM

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