We hosted the final visit by a garden group to our garden for the year at the beginning of this month. We were pleased that there was still plenty of interest for our friends from the South Shropshire Mini-group of the Hardy Plant Society.
As usual we shall start this month’s wander in the front garden. In the gateway our pink pelargoniums continue to flower below our house nameplate on our gatepost.
The “Chatto Garden” is beautiful every day of every year and today is no exception. The red leaf blades of the grass, Imperata cylindrica “Red Baron”, seem more colourful in the late summer sun. Nearby the dying flowers of the Agapanthus “Black Panther” still glow blue against the biscuit colours of the grasses.
The first of our many Michaelmas Daisies are now flowering and close by our latest small tree, a wonderful Acer pectinatum, with red stems and leaf petioles has settled well.
The other front garden borders still have plenty of interest to look at.
By our front door the shrub, Buddleja lindleyana continues to flower on after many months. Also in our Freda Garden the strange yellow flowers of Kirengeshoma palmata are on the verge of opening into its bell shaped blooms. These two unusual flowers grow side by side and look beautiful together with their complimentary yellow and blue.
In the back garden the Shed Border is still punctuated by the yellow spires of the Verbascum which look even brighter with the red hybrid tea rose blooming alongside. Even more colourful is the Tropical Garden with this star shaped Dahlia starring with Ricinus. The bee arrived at the very centre of this Dahlia just as I pressed the shutter button.
Next to the hot colours of the Tropical Garden the pastel shades of our Sweet Peas that clamber up the wall trellis cool things down a little.
In the Rill Garden the red-flowered Clematis flowers of Hagley Hybrid clamber around behind the succulent reddish-black leaved Aeonium affording a fiery combination.
In the seaside garden the airy Cosmos plants still flower profusely in whites and pale pinks.
The little Pollinators Bed on either side of the Insect Hotel still displays a few flowers such as the white Lychnis coronaria and the last few petals hang onto the Leonotis which now shows its cylindrical seed heads. Close by our grapes are colouring up promising tasty, juicy fresh fruits soon. Another brown seed head of the Eryngium “Miss Wilmott’s Ghost” is now full of black seeds ripe and ready to drop to the soil to produce next year’s plants.
The Secret Garden always provides plenty of colour interest and variety of texture. Geranium Rosanne seems to be perpetually in flower and it looks particularly good with grasses. Our Aesculus x mutabilis “Induta” has a few seeds forming and as they ripen little shining brown “conkers” show in the cracking cases.
In the Spring Garden Rosanne stars again and the final few flowers of Cosmos polidor look golden against the silver of the Betula’s silver trunk. Close by in the Chicken Garden apples await harvesting and Miscanthus grasses colour up attractively.
I shall finish with two special plants, an Acer turning buttercup yellow and Persicaria amplexicaule rosea.
After finishing this post the garden seemed to change as autumn approached, so I decided to take a few photos right at the end of the month to illustrate how the garden changes with time, sometimes a short time. So look out for a colourful gallery in Part Two.
