I’ve already put my butterfly book away for the winter, yet the weather has remained mild and the insects are still busying themselves in the garden. It’s been wonderful watching them hopping around and finding the last of the year’s nectar. It’s fascinating watching lazy wasps gorging on fallen apples, but what should you plant if you want to feed the insects at the tail end of the year?
There are plenty of tried-and-tested shrubs that will flower until the first proper November air frost tells them not to be so darned silly. Abelia, flowering since June, is one, and so are the hardy fuchsias. Indigofera pendula, on my kitchen wall, with trails of pink pea flowers 40cm long, is another. An up-and-coming multi-stemmed sub-shrub is Anisodontea ‘El Rayo’, said to be half-hardy (mine came through last winter, many people’s didn’t) but often coming back from the base even if cut to the ground. It’s a South African semi-evergreen, hairy-leaved mallow relative and has dusky pink red-centred flowers, but its most trumpeted claim to fame is that it blooms, at least in some small way, throughout the year. Not in my windy, stem-waggling garden, I’m sure, but in warmth and shelter, why not? So a real insect-pleaser. In a year or two it’s going to be absolutely everywhere, you watch.
October can be a fantastically colourful month if you plant for it. Some summer plants will be soldiering on — dahlias and Japanese anemones — but others are just coming into their prime. The tall blue monk’s hood Aconitum carmichaelii, like a deep blue delphinium, is glorious in any sunshine. Daisies short and tall in their many Michaelmassy kinds (and under their many new names — sadly, no longer asters) come into their own; especially good is the almost bushy Symphyotrichum lateriflorum var. horizontale, with its greeny black fine foliage, tiered twigs and clouds of tiny pink and white flowers.
Many a sedum variety (now Hylotelephium) have been coming into flower through the summer, but the latest of the lot, beloved by bees and butterflies, is the ice plant Hylotelephium spectabile, pale-leaved, bright-pink flowered and invaluable for its September-October display. Somebody once described those wide platform flowers, crowded with butterflies, as looking like aircraft carriers.
That monk’s hood is not the only late blue. Royal blue Salvia patens, a perennial with tuberous roots, can persist into November, and looks fine with red Hesperantha coccinea ‘Major’. Those plumbago shrublets Ceratostigma willmottianum and griffithii bear the deepest blue flowers, nestling among leaves that are turning claret as autumn progresses. They’re plants that just keep on flowering until the weather tells them to stop.
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In patio pots there are pelargoniums, which will keep going until the threat of frost means that you take them indoors; scented-leaved ‘Copthorne’ and ‘Clorinda’ seem determined to see the season out, and the little species P. ionidiflorum remains full of flower.
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But if you really want an eyeful of autumn colour, and you can offer sun and light soil, go for nerines. Think of them as small outdoor amaryllis. I was going to say “delicate” amaryllis except that the commonest hardiest kind, Nerine bowdenii, is a loud, lipstick pink, way past Barbie (for a soft pink, try ‘Stephanie’). Plant the bulbs on the soil’s surface, leave them alone and they will serve you well for years, becoming leafless in midsummer and throwing up 45cm flower stems from bare bulbs.
I’d also plant Sternbergia lutea, which are like waxy, glowing October crocuses; even the foliage glows rich green. I have them planted among a patch of dwarf Cape daisies (Osteospermum jucundum ‘Snow Pixie’) and every year they take me by surprise — one day nothing, the next these golden bowls. Not all sternbergias flower well, so my advice is to buy a potful in flower rather than uncertain dry bulbs.
Butterflies are very pretty, but one must be broad-minded; all insects have their place. Pots of pineapple lilies (Eucomis) are good in September-October and their coconutty smell is a lure to flies. But nothing is better for insects than ivy. Its flowers may smell strange, but flies and moths (and moth-loving bats) love it and, unpruned and allowed to flower, it is perhaps the best and last source of nectar in a garden, plus it has those black berries to follow. And autumn berries — well, that’s another story.
Weeder’s digest
One of the best bulbs for dry shade is the marbled-leaved cuckoo pint, Arum italicum ‘Marmoratum’, both for foliage and autumn berries. It is in leaf already and plants lifted now will provide a whole handful of tiny bulbs that you can spread around.
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Once rose bushes and climbers have stopped performing it’s so easy to forget about them, but that doesn’t mean they stop growing, so look out for extra-long new shoots that will catch the wind through the winter, causing the whole bush to rock, unless the shoots are torn off by wind. Shorten them back to meet the rest of the canopy.
Some plants are wonderfully easy to grow from hardwood cuttings by simply shoving a stick in the ground: buddleias, fancy-leaved elders, forsythia, currants of all kinds, coloured-barked willows and dogwoods, and vigorous roses. Take 30-40cm lengths of firm young wood, set two-thirds into the soil either in a reserve plot or where they are intended to grow. Expect shoots in mid to late spring.
Whether you’re mowing the grass or picking up autumn leaves, your mower will do an
infinitely better job if the vents in the grassbox are free of clippings and can offer a strong through-put of air and plenty of “lift”. So when you put the machine away, give the vents a quick brush before the clippings set hard.
The grass can be left longer now anyway, not letting it grow rank and bare at the base but simply giving it some longer leaf surface to make energy during the shorter winter days.
Question time
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Q I never know whether I am supposed to put broken crocks in the bottom of pots or not. Or whether compost alone is OK. What do you do?
D Boot
A It depends mostly on what’s being grown. More often than not I mix 10 per cent coarse grit with my potting compost, which improves the drainage to start with. But if a plastic pot is going to sit directly on paving, even though it doesn’t need broken crocks in the bottom to keep it draining, I still like to put some crocks in, because it stops the compost endlessly wicking moisture up from the paving. An inch of grit in the bottom of the pot would do the same. On the other hand, if it was a very thirsty plant, then good contact with the moist paving would be helpful and I’d add no crocks.
Q We have a young sycamore in our new garden. Will it make 70ft like the Sycamore Gap tree, or was that special?
F Greeley
A It was normal. The sycamore is a wonderful, wind-resistant weed tree. But let’s not knock it: its ever-popular pink-leaved variety ‘Brilliantissimum’ is a genuinely small tree, as is yellow and purple ‘Prinz Handjery’. They’re good trees for small gardens.
Q We have a 6ft Osmanthus delavayi hedge beside a path at the back of the house which smells wonderful in April. I was wondering if there was another small-leaved evergreen I could use to make a hedge on the opposite side of the path that would give perfume at a different time?
G Pauly
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A How about a different osmanthus? O. heterophyllus flowers in autumn and although the flowers are tiny and tucked among the foliage they smell sweetly on the air of coconut. It gets called the holly-leaved osmanthus because the leaves are gently prickly but it’s not vicious like a true holly. Most common are the purple(ish) and variegated forms. I rather like the yellow-mottled ‘Goshiki’.
Send your questions to stephen.anderton@thetimes.co.uk
