Fact Sheet: Autumn Flowers
Presenter: Sophie Thomson, 05/03/2011
SERIES 22 Episode 04
We're in one of my favourite gardens in Stirling in the Adelaide Hills - Glenalta. Framed by magnificent old trees, Glenalta is an 80 hectare property of which about 2 hectares is garden and includes a stunning lake, a beautiful woodland and this amazing colourful flower border that reminds me of the famous flower borders in England.
In Adelaide, we're at the end of a hot summer and many of the plants that have been flowering in spring and early summer have finished. But if you're like me and you like to have colour and interest in your garden all year round, don't despair because there's plenty of plants that will provide late season colour as we move into the cooler months. And I'm going to show you some of my favourites.
Look at these vibrant orange flowers with black spots. Aren't they a showstopper? This is the Tiger Lily. It comes from Northern and Eastern Asia and it's a true Lilium dying down to nothing in the winter and grows up over the warmer months to flower at this time. You can see by the number of buds it actually flowers over a reasonable flowering period and it makes a wonderful cut flower. They're easy to grow. You do need reasonable soil and it must be well drained and they do need some watering over summer to grow up. But one of the fascinating things is not only do the bulbs multiply in the ground, but up and down the stem. They've got little bulbils and these will develop into larger bulbs too, so if you want to multiply your numbers, simply grab a handful and grow them on.
By way of contrast, this flower looks subtle and delicate, but it's actually tough and really easy to grow. It's Achillea, commonly known as Yarrow. It forms a dense clump of fine, ferny foliage and these upright, slender stems topped with flat heads of flowers. The flowers can be in this 'pinky' red colour, yellow, white, pink or even mauve. The old fashioned forms tend to be a little bit vigorous, possibly even invasive, but they're relatively easy to control. All you do is grab a spent flower stem, pull it out of the ground and you pull out some of the root with it and this foliage makes a wonderful compost accelerator for your compost heap. Yarrows grow beautifully in a sunny spot and remarkably drought tolerant once established.
Aren't these flowers just exquisite? Believe it or not, it's a Campanula. Now most Companulas have blue or mauve flowers, but this one, as you can see, has beautiful white bells, they're quite large and if you look inside, it has delicate mauve or burgundy markings up inside the flower. Now it comes from places like Siberia, China and Japan and obviously coming from there, it needs a reasonable amount of water in the warmer months to flower. It starts flowering in spring and continues into autumn. It's actually quite easy to grow once you've got reasonable soil and one tip is, if you want to divide it up to get more plants, don't do it when it's dormant in winter time - wait till it starts to move off with foliage in spring and then you'll be able to divide it successfully.
Everyone knows that Dahlias are great value for summer colour in the garden, however some of the larger flowered forms can be a bit tricky to place because the weight of their flowers means that the bush needs quite secure staking and that can look a bit daggy. This is one of my favourite Dahlias. It's called 'Bishop of Llandaff' and what I love about it apart from its vibrant red flowers and its stunning dark 'purpley' black foliage is the fact that it actually grows like a bush - about a metre high and shouldn't require staking. Now anything that flowers for a succession over summer will need some supplementary watering. However what you actually find, because Dahlias have tubers, they're a lot tougher than you think.
As we head into autumn, don't think it's only foliages that are going to add interest to your garden. There's a whole variety of flowering plants that will add vibrancy and colour.
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