Michaelmas daisies, planted in groups, backlit by soft autumnal sunshine, are one of the great sights of autumn in the garden. There are many different species with a wide range of height, habit and colour. They have predominantly blue, pink and lavender shades and can form large clumps, which, on a warm autumn day attract bees and butterflies galore. Planted en masse they will give much joy through until very late in the year. In my own garden I also have Aster amellus ‘Forncett Flourish’ and Symphyotrichum ‘Coombe Fishacre’, bought from Old Court Nurseries in Malvern, mixed with Helenium ‘Sahin’s Early Flowerer’, a beautiful upright orange daisy.
Dahlias
Dahlia ‘Dovegrove’
© Mark Bolton. A New Cottage Garden: A practical guide to creating a picture-perfect cottage garden (Pimpernel Press, £22)
Dahlias can provide zingy colour, and are ideal for cutting and bringing into the house. They can be tricky, though, as they don’t like being cold, so it’s usually suggested that the tubers are uprooted in late autumn and then replanted in spring. In my garden they are planted alongside Leucanthemum vulgare ‘Edgeworth Giant’, which is a giant ox-eye daisy that provides interest right through until the first frosts. Sunflowers give the almost instant height that a new garden requires, and I leave these right up until the winter, as the birds love the seeds. This year, a row of tomatoes provided a seemingly endless harvest, and alongside this is one of my new favourite plants, Tagetes ‘Cinnabar’, which is an annual African marigold popularised by the late Christopher Lloyd at Great Dixter in West Sussex. It is prolific, quite tall for a marigold (about 1 metre) and has the most unusual dusky red petals with gold edging. Tom Coward at Gravetye Manor gave me the plants and they self-seed well, so I have a permanent supply.
Crab-apple and cherry trees
No garden, least of all the cottage garden, should be without a tree or two, and crab-apples fit the bill better than most. They are generally quite small, they provide blossom, fruit and foliage (so work well in three of the four seasons) and they are much loved by our garden birds. Crab-apple jelly is a delight (try it with cheese and be forever converted!). The cottage gardeners of old would split their hard-working gardens between produce, animals and flowers, and the produce would always include fruit trees. Apples in autumn would have been a much-anticipated treat and people would have carefully stored them, wrapped in paper and stacked in boxes, away from the cold and the mice, so that they could be enjoyed through the long, dark winters.
Cherries too, can provide year-round interest, and many are available as small trees. I have a lovely cultivar (possibly Prunus ‘Okame’ – but I’m still trying to identify it for sure) that flowers its socks off in very early spring, before the leaves arrive. Its pink and pendulous blossom lights up one of our side borders. It has pretty bark, and in autumn the leaves turn a rich gold.
Mixing vegetables, herbs and flowers
Feverfew (Tanacetum parthenium) among kale plants
© Mark Bolton. A New Cottage Garden: A practical guide to creating a picture-perfect cottage garden (Pimpernel Press, £22)
I have planted rhubarb, spinach, leeks, thyme, sage and spring onions alongside the sweet pea wigwam, and this mixing of vegetables, herbs and flowers is the tell-tale sign of a real cottage garden. Runner beans can be trained up rustic plant supports, providing not only deep red flowers in summer but an edible feast into the autumn. And the sight of leeks standing in line in the autumn garden is one that few garden photographers can resist. Marrows and pumpkins are of course an autumn staple, but they do tend to take up a lot of space; some of the other squashes are fairly small and the best way to grow them is to train them over a trellis or a vertical structure. That way they not only ripen more readily, but also leave some of the ground space free. These make for lovely photographic subjects.
This is an abridged extract from A New Cottage Garden: A practical guide to creating a picture-perfect cottage garden (Pimpernel Press, £22), with photography and text by Mark Bolton.
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