Let’s talk about gardening now, our green thumbed guru Lynda Hallinan is with me to discuss autumn trees.
Some of Lynda’s faves:
1. Acer rubrum October Glory – this is a maple but not a Japanese maple, more like a Canadian flag maple. It goes torch-red even in autumn.
2. If you have swampy soil, or – an actual swamp – there are two stunning options. The swamp cypress, Taxodium distichum, which is a deciduous conifer that grows to 25m (for big gardens only) and sheds its feathery foliage in a rusty orange display. Or plant Nyssa sylvatica, which takes about 5 years to reach 3m tall, and has bright red foliage. It’s exquisite.
3. Liquidambars are lovely but tend to be a bit brittle in exposed gardens, but they’re reliable for autumn colour even in warmer areas.
4. The claret ash, Fraxinus ‘Raywoodii’, is wicked for red-wine coloured autumn foliage, but if you’d rather have gold, go for a Gingko biloba as a specimen tree. They’re incredibly slow growing though – and make sure you get a male tree as the females produce kernels that smell like vomit. (There’s no other way to put it)
5. And for small, city sections, the smoke bush (Cotinus) and the small tree Cercis canadensis ‘Forest Pansy’ both have burgundy foliage during spring and summer that is shed in a brilliant display of copper, orange and yellow.
6. Ginkgo biloba – such a fantastic display of buttery yellow, late in autumn
It’s time to strip beds and get composting.
Photo: Lynda Hallinan
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