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Star plants for September

27/9/2013

 
A wonderful bridge between summer & autumn
September can be a great month for time spent outdoors and in the garden. On the hills and along the coast, the skies are often clear, and the temperature is pleasant enough for long walks. In the garden, it's the perfect weather for planting: warm and rainy, so plants can establish their root systems before the cold weather sets in. It's also a wonderful time to plan next year's great adventures - whether new crops (berries galore) or new plans (a kitchen garden). 

It's also a great time of year for colour, shape and texture in the garden. Here are a few of my favourite plants for September...
PictureBumble bee on Abelia x grandiflora
Shrubs
Abelia x grandiflora is a medium-size shrub with an arching habit. It's covered with small, creamy or pale pink bell-shaped flowers from mid-summer through to October. It really comes into its own in September, when few other shrubs are flowering. It prefers full sun and moist, well-drained soil, but it's also doing well for me in a sheltered but dry east-facing site, so you could stretch its reach a little.



PicturePhysocarpus opulifolius
Purple leaved shrubs 
Another interesting shrub is Physocarpus opulifolius. This has several cultivars, including 'Diabolo'. It is a tall shrub, growing to about 1.5-2m high, with wrinkled purple leaves ending in a graceful tip. The colour is similar to that of a purple beech (Fagus sylvatica purpurea), and is a lovely choice if you wish to create purple accents throughout your garden. It grows in full sun or part shade, and works well in the middle to back of your border. In summer it has clusters of small, white-pink flowers.

Of course, if you like purple accents in shrubs, then you can't go wrong with my absolute favourite, Cotinus 'Royal Purple.' The purple foliage become red-tinged as autumn progresses, while the pink-purple flower plumes are a sight to behold in summer. Almost delicious! 

PicturePenstemon 'Andenken'
Perennials
My favourite perennial for autumn is Penstemon 'Andenken an Friedrich Hahn' (syn. Garnet). I grew this in London, where it thrived despite heavy clay and a semi-shaded position. Penstemons are meant to be half-hardy, but mine are doing well here in Oxfordshire, where the frosts are heavy and last well into late May/early June.  

Penstemon Andenken is not easy to get hold of, despite being well-known as the toughest of the numerous cultivars. But don't bother with many of the cultivars for sale - although they have large flower-heads, they're not tough, and the overlarge flower heads often droop unhappily. 

To give penstemons a fighting chance, trim the foliage lightly in late autumn, after flowering, but wait until the spring to cut it back fully. This will provide some protection from frosts over the winter. 

PictureSedum 'HerbstFreude'
Sedums
The other great perennial for this time of year, and for Oxfordshire soil, is the Sedum. It needs full sun and well-drained, poor soil to do well. There's a huge variety, from the small ground-creepers, to the taller, purple varieties like 'Morchen' (which can be seen at Waterperry Gardens). They're also great for splitting and potting on. I recently split and potted up several, and they're already ready for replanting after only 2-3 weeks, so they're a cheap way to fill your borders, or, if your garden is smaller, to add some colour to your patio plants.

Asters are also wonderful. We have too many of the washed-out pale pink ones in our garden, which are also prolific along the Thames this time of year. Choose, instead, some of the more striking cultivars, and consider visiting Waterperry Gardens for ideas - their aster display, along the main border, is amazing. 

Bulbs
Cyclamen are lovely annual bulbs to pot up or plant in mixed beds for autumn colour, and I'm enjoying them right now.

Dahlias are, properly speaking, perennials, but are generally treated in England as annuals, as they are frost-tender. I first realised their potential when I visited a friend's garden in mid October. He had mixed a huge variety of dahlias together, higgedly piggedly, in one long border, and the view from his kitchen window was a sensational blaze of spiky, starry fireworks. This is the first year I've planted them. My display is not a patch on my friend's, but they're still a real pleasure to behold. 

Foraging for crab apples

9/9/2013

 
PictureCrabapples from the tree
Crab apple bounty
Last week I climbed up a rickety old step-ladder and filled my basket with crab apples.

The crab apple tree in the wild garden has had a bumper year. Of course, all the lovely ripe red ones are at the top of the tree, which is tall and hasn't been pruned in a decade or two. But I gathered a decent amount, including some windfalls, and set about making crab apple and mint jelly.

How to make crab apple jelly 
Wikihow has a good explanation for how to do this (see http://www.wikihow.com/Make-Crab-Apple-Jelly) and my own version is below. My main problem was having insufficient pots and pans, which rather reminded me of my struggles to hand-extract wild honey. Anyway, I managed, and the end result is a delicious jelly, which I can enjoy with some roast lamb or pork during the winter months, and has already graced my morning toast, and sandwiched a Victoria sponge. 
1. Fill a saucepan with crab apples and cover with water. Bring to the boil, and simmer well for about 30-45 minutes, depending on how ripe the fruit are, until the apples are soft and mushy. 

2. Place a muslin over a steel colander and drain the fruit for a few hours.
3. Add caster sugar to the liquid in a ratio of about 4:5. I weighed the crab apple liquid, which was 2kg, and added 1.8kg of sugar. 

4. Boil gently until the jelly thickens. Some recipes say this only takes 10 mins, but it took me about 30 mins. You can test this by placing a small amount on a saucer and leaving it to cool or placing in the fridge. If it sets lightly, the jelly is ready. Add several mint strands, and infuse.

5. Ladle the warm jelly into sterile glass jars, seal, and leave to cool. 

Autumn in the garden

1/9/2013

 
The local farmer has been busy this past month, bringing in the harvest. The barn behind Neats Home is filling up with straw bales. Apples are forming on the wildlings near the river. Mulberries are ripening on a sprawling tree. The wasps are feasting on rotting crabapples and raiding my bees. It's September, and the start of autumn.

The weather in England during September and October is perfect for hiking the Cornish coast path and Lakeland fells - fabulous blue skies, warm days, and cool nights. But this autumn I won't have time to hike up hills. This autumn, like last year's, will be a busy time in the garden.

What's all this you read in books - about being busy sowing seeds and planting out in spring and early summer? That's the fun, easy stuff, and to be honest, it doesn't take up much time. What takes time is heavy digging to clear ground and prepare holes for new trees. What takes time is shovelling, barrowing, and forking in manure, pruning overgrown shrubs, lifting and splitting perennials... and dithering about where to replant them!
Picture
In truth, I've scarcely been able to contain my impatience for autumn to arrive! Throughout July and August I've been reminding myself not to get carried away and start digging plants up and moving them.  It's been difficult. But now I'm officially allowed to get on with it all... so let the fun - and the hard work - begin! 

Happy autumn, happy gardening!

    Favourite Sites

    Seedaholic
    Good suppliers of flower, veg and unusual plant seeds. 

    Fentongollan
    Cornish bulb supplier. My go-to for daffodils. Helpful staff. 

    Peter Nyssen
    All-round fab website for bulb hunting. Excellent quality tulips.

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