Plant Combinations That Shine In Autumn | The RHS

When I'm choosing what plants to put together in a garden, what plants I'm going to grow, I like to compare it to cooking. In the same way you do with ingredients in a supermarket, trying to put what will taste best together in a meal, but in a garden look good together, work good together, and it's easy to grow. Plants like this, Miscanthus gracillimus, Pennisetum benariensis, and this is a plant that just keeps on going and doesn't know where to stop will self-seed around the border, Pennisetum hamelis. And then here you've got a Canthus mollis which has gone over now, it's finished flowering in May-June time, it has these beautiful sort of spiny white flowers that sort of erupt through the lower grasses. And this, at this time of year, is one of my favourite combinations. Not only has it withstood 12 weeks of very little to no rain and that abhorrent heat that we had for so long this summer it's still looking really good the best bit i think is you don't need to do anything to it all year round the only time we cut these plants back is in february so we leave them all through the winter and they'll go they'll start to go into wheaty sort of yellows and rusty oranges and then to fade in completely and in the winter you get the frost dancing on the seed heads so this is a very easy to grow very resilient and low maintenance combination that looks great now and for the rest of the year the combination we just looked at is quite green and structural and tactile this time of year but even in mid to late october you can still have color in a garden plants like these asters this is aster monk it's of my favorite asters it's got this beautiful sort of violet flower head really easy to grow but when you pair it with something like this bright butter yellow helianthus the two daisy like flower heads work brilliantly together the violet against the soft yellow means they complement each other beautifully and then if you add in something like this Pennisetum fairy tales this is a little trick that i was taught by sarah raven when we were working on her garden at chelsea flower show years and years and years ago is to see how plants look good together it's actually picking a few almost creating a little buttonhole bouquet and you can see how they interact together this is a trio of three plants that will see you right the way through till winter hits and even then they're gonna still look good the texture of this penicetum it's got this little rose sort of tint to its stamens so it sort of glows in this late autumn sun. I think that's a really beautiful trio of plants that will do great in almost any garden, take very little effort to grow and will reward you right the way through to winter. This is my third combination, my favourite combination for the moment. It doesn't look maybe as prolific as some of the other ones that just looked at but there's some really brilliant plants here that i think deserve to be in every almost gardens plants like this rosemary are going to give you evergreen structure that can hold the space all through the year and smells divine and then next to it is a slightly more unusual plant this is pistachio so it's exactly it's the pistachio that you've heard of that you've eaten but also makes a brilliant resilient really hard-working shrub that I've clipped into a bit of a topiary shape here it's got these sort of reddish tinge to the stems and really tactile leaves just behind it here we've got this midnight blue salvia that's stealing the show that's adding the drama and the color at the moment and it is slightly tender so if you're in an area that does get quite heavy frost it's always worth taking cuttings of that at the moment isn't it beautiful and then we have the Peter Walker's lily i planted this area up not that long ago so the plants are just starting to establish and again the soft lilac of this brilliant for bees and butterflies and pollinators but as in most gardens i've got some gaps that have appeared through the year where plants have maybe not done too well i always see a gap as an opportunity to plant something new so I've got three oregano here which ties in with the edible qualities of some of the plants here but more so has these beautiful soft pink flowers that I think will complement the salvia beautifully so I'm going to pop some at the front amongst the peonies and some here amongst the rosemary so it can grow up and ramble through the other plants so those are just three of my favorite combinations from right now and I could reel off dozens more i get so excited about playing with plants now is the perfect time to plant up your garden so if you're thinking about what plants to put together or what plants look great already in your garden i'd really love to know so if you want to leave a comment below i'd love to see some of your combinations and if you want to give it a like a follow and a subscribe that would be amazing too in the meantime i'm going to get these oregano planted if you find our videos helpful click the like subscribe and notification buttons below to help us reach more people with free expert advice