Garden Centre

Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Autumn flowers that are guaranteed to please

Looking out on my garden in October, it’s nearly as bright as in July – while there may be less blooms to admire, the colours are actually more intense, in fact, because the flowers that are in bloom are highlighted against the bright autumn foliage of my sumach tree and the katsura tree, both of which become yellow-orange at this time of year.

The nerines shine out with their lollipop pink and against them the salvias make an exciting contrast, especially salvia involucrate 'Bethellii', which is known as the rose leaf salvia and has similarly glowing pink flowers, and the related but utterly dissimilar salvia corrugata which picks up the colour in the garden in a most impressive way – first with deep green heavily corrugated leaves (hence the name) but offering intensely blue flowers, almost gentian like in shade, which look utterly fantastic against the backdrop of an orange berried pyracantha, or simply highlighted by a grey wall or fence. Of course salvias can be tender, and you need a sheltered spot to get them to overwinter. Even in a safe place, you need to cut them down at the end of the flowering season (often late into November) and mulch them, or you can do what I do - take cuttings now – they root like mint and I simply plant them out the following year when they flower abundantly.

Labels: autumn flowers, katsura tree, nerine, pyracantha, salvia, sumach

The All Seasons Gardener at 7:57 AM 0 Comments

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