Autumn! How to Make Your Garden Thrive Now

Autumn is one of the most beautiful and indeed most important times in the gardening year. That's because it's when next year's borders really begin. It's Alexandra here from the Middlesized Garden YouTube channel and blog and I went down to the world-famous Beth Chateau Gardens in Essex to talk to head gardener Orsa Greggers-Warg. She's picked out some of her favorite plants for this time of year, for fall, for autumn, for sun, for shade and for dry areas because the Beth Chateau Dry Garden is one of the most famous in the UK. The Beth Chateau Gardens are seven and a half acres of land that was once considered too difficult to farm. With dry stony ground at one end and boggy wet ground at the other, it meant that Beth developed her principle of right plant place which has become one of the most important rules in gardening. The Beth Chateau Gardens have also got an award-winning nursery where you can buy plants and the Beth Chateau Education Foundation runs projects, workshops, courses and seminars. So Orsa, how do you plan your autumn borders? So we don't actually plan specifically for the autumn, so when we redesign a border we actually think about how it's going to look throughout the year. This is really important to make sure that what's going to bring the autumn colour also has nice foliage, for example, earlier in the year and complements the rest of the planting scheme. So it's just taking notes earlier in the season what hasn't worked. There might be something that we need to split and divide as well that's actually grown too well that just needs to be reduced and autumn is a really great time to do that with many plants. And when it comes to filling gaps, again it's about the contrasting textures and shapes and foliage and of course right plant, right place. That's really the basis, you know. Beth's ethos still guides us very much which plant we would put in which part of the garden. Yes, this is really the absolute home of right plant, right place, isn't it? And you've got such an amazing variety with the dry garden, the water garden and the other parts of the garden. So we've had a really dry spring and summer as you know, very hot summer as well, and down here the lawn has stayed green. We didn't irrigate anyway in the garden apart from when we plant new plants obviously, but I mean you can see how lush all the planting is here compared with the gravel garden which has got a very different feel to it. So in terms of plants for a sunny place in autumn, what would be your top three that are looking good at the moment? If it's a good average size and moisture retentive, I really like Venonia. Tall, upright, self-supporting, beautiful sort of purpley flowers at the top quite late in the season. It's looking great at the moment. Grasses, we've got the beautiful Miscanthus bachato, named after Beth, which is quite sort of a delicate, elegant Miscanthus. Eupatorium or Eucatricum, I think it's called now, they've changed its name. Of course all these three plants are quite tall. There is also, we've got a lovely combination in one of the borders with the little pale blue succicella incisa, these little sort of buttons that float in the air. And then you've got the obedient plant, Physostegia, the pink one next to it. And then we've got Hesperantha next to that. So that's a really lovely combination as well for colour. So when we come to then dappled shade or partial shade, what else would look good at this time of year? I think for shade in general, it's not just about the flower colour. I think there was sort of the texture and shape and form. You should really be able to take a black and white photograph of a border and it should still provide enough interest. And in the dry garden, which is looking completely stunning at the moment, what would you say are your favourites there? California Fuchsia, Epilobium, or some people might know it as Saucineria. They've really, really sort of bright, intense little sort of trumpet coloured flowers. It's not the hardiest, so it really needs a free-draining soil, but that's brilliant for late colour in this time of year. And what would you say are two good combinations that you like up there? Hylotelephiums. We couldn't do without them. So something like Matrona or Corifrankelstein, which has got really dark foliage. They look brilliant together. Lovely. Well, what we might do is have a little look around the garden and you can point out some combinations you think work particularly well. So also tell me how you put together this group and what people should look out for when they're putting together groups like this. I mean, I think this is a perfect example. You've got the Yoke Pyeweed with its dome-shaped flower heads next to Rudbeckia demii. And then you've got this lovely Grass Mullinia and Carulia variegata, which has got beautiful variegated foliage. And then we've got these spikes of the Bistorta, Bistorta amplexicalis. And although, you know, there's different colours you have there, the yellow foliage, which sort of understems some of the Mullinia repeated in the Rudbeckia. And then you've got the red sort of pink reflected in both these plants. So you've got a spike, a grass, a daisy and a rather lovely puff, fluffy thing. And then you've got echoing the reds and the yellows between the grasses and the Rudbeckia and Bistorta and the So it's all kind of linking up and contrasting. They do link up, but in a very subtle way. And of course, early in the season, so we have bulbs coming up through, they all prefer the same sort of, like the moisture-retentive soil as well, and, you know, thrive in an open, sunny position. Lovely. Well, let's go to a shady position, shall we, and look at a combination. So also, this is a shady place. Is it also dry or damp? Because dry shade is the hardest thing, isn't it? It is, isn't it? This is very dry. All the plants here are selected because they can cope with the dry conditions. So here we've got Geranium faeum summerbore, with those lovely dark blotches on the leaves. We've got Liriope muscari, with the spires of really intense purple, bluish flowers. And actually, there's a lovely grass down here as well. What is this? It's a really beautiful grass that flowers quite early in the season. So this is Melica uniflora albid. It's got this really sort of tiny, tiny bead-like flowers, superb in dry shade. It takes a little while to establish, but once it gets going, it tends to seed around, and it's just a really good doer. And have you got any tips for people getting plants established in dry shade? Well, I think just generally with the changing climate, we're moving away more and more from spring planting. So ideally planting in autumn, while it's nice and warm and got moisture in the soil, water in really well, give them a really good soak, and then mulch on top of that. So that way you're really sort of locking the moisture. And by planting in autumn, you really give the plants a good start to establish the roots before it gets too hot and dry next year. And by giving them a good soak, would that be put the whole pot in a bucket for how long? We tend to put every single pot in a bucket of water until it stops bubbling, and that way you know that the whole root pool is saturated, there's no air pockets. And then it's really important to water afterwards as well, to make sure again that there's no air pockets in the soil, and really give it a good soak and water the soil around the roots. Add and splash water on the foliage. And in this area which is drier and shady, do you water it at all once you've set it in, you've done your really good watering at the beginning? How often would you water here in dry shade for a newly established plant? I would say that most of the plantings we do, and because we do it in the autumn, that's the only time we need to water. Elsewhere in the which is quite unusual. We tend to plant smaller plants, nine centimetre, one litre pots are ideal, but on this occasion we had to go slightly bigger, so quite large root pools. And then we had to keep an eye, you know, throughout the summer months, but maybe once a month. But generally, if you plant now and water them in, there should be enough rainfall in the autumn and that should be enough. Of course, if you plant in the spring, keep an eye, you know, after a week or two. So don't do it just out of habit, really, you know, look at the plants, does it really need it, and then give it a really good soak. So shall we now have a look at the dry garden? Speaking of water, let's do that, let's head up into to the sun. So we're now in the famous gravel garden, which Beth created out of a very stony car park, didn't she? And what we've got here is some plants are looking very good at the moment. What are your favourite combinations for this time of year in a dry or gravel garden? I like Onostra or Gowra, as you know, some people still call it. It's just been flowering since early summer and it looks so great with Hylothylephiums, for example. Then we've got little low spreading ground cover, the California Fuchsia, Epilobium, that's fantastic if you've got really free draining soil. And then, of course, like Caryopteris with intense blue flowers. And then, of course, the grasses. So we've got Cetum Willowsum, which is borderline hardy in many areas, but because of the free draining soil, it's really, really thriving here. And then we've got Penicillium macrorum, which is much more upright and a little bit of a spreader if you're on heavier soil, which is also stunning. And, of course, Stipa Gigantea and Stipa Tenosuma. And is there anything special about planting and maintaining in this garden that's different? Because it's very dry, it's very free draining. What would you advise people to do? Well, we are actually sitting on top of five, six metres of sandy gravel here. So that's just the natural soil. So for us, most of the maintenance here is editing the picture. We use a gravel mulch on top of the very free draining soil. That kind of helps lock in the moisture a little bit. But it's by no means a low maintenance garden, because every little seed that falls down tends to germinate because it's nice and moist and warm under the gravel. So there's a lot of very fiddly hand weeding. So weeding is the big thing? Weeding is a big thing. And when it comes to planting, like before, we tend to use smaller, younger plants to get them well established. We improve the soil a little bit with some organic matter and mix that in really well, just to give the plants a good start. But we don't actually add a lot of organic matter. When Beth started the gravel garden in 91, 92, she did add a lot of compost and even manure and mix it in. But we just realised over the years that the plants are absolutely fine. They're all selected because of their dry tolerance. You'll see a lot of succulent leaves, small leaves, especially compared with a water garden where we are seeing big lush foliage, silvery leaves that reflect the sunlight or hairy leaves that trap the moisture, which are all sort of good indicators. And I think I also need to say, because we've had one of the hottest, driest summers for a while, and one can't really expect the garden to look as lush as it does in May and early June, sort of come July. And just because the plants are drought resistant doesn't mean that they are going to look as great and full of bloom, perhaps in the middle of a heat wave, but they will recover. And in terms of clearing them up with the gravel, how do you manage that? So we try and avoid a lot of the leaves, for example, so we don't really want that as a humus content. So going into the gravel, we want to keep that as clear as possible. So we use leaf blowers and rakes to get rid of all the organic matter. We don't tend to cut everything back until sort of late winter when we go in and do really thorough weed. A lot of these grasses and seed head add so much interest and structure in the winter, but it's also great for wildlife. And then we go in and tidy up. I think it's great to go and look at other gardens, get some inspiration, see what's looking good, particularly in the area where you live. And also really, again, think about foliage and textures and what's going to look great later in the year as well. And don't just focus on flowers, look as much at the foliage and seed heads. And because autumn is such an important time of year, because it's when next year's borders really begin, don't miss this video coming up next with Steve Edney and Louise Dowell, where they tell you how to refresh your borders for next year, how to choose and plant perennials and how to lift and divide plants. And thank you for watching. Goodbye!