September

Words and photos by Olivia Thomas

The changing season

The first traces of Autumn are creeping in. I head out first thing to the menagerie (we have rabbits and chickens in the garden; the cats want to come in and the dogs want to go out) to be met with heavy dew, haze, and a slight chill in the air, however warm the day gets later. Underipe apples start to pepper the lawn under the apple trees, and the acers, always the first to turn, start to show fiery edges to their leaves.

But I’m happy, as I love autumn and early winter the best of all seasons. Gretchen Rubin’s thought ‘September is the other January’ works for me - as the kids start a new school year, I get fired up with new ideas and projects. We’ve spent a lot of this year planning a garden re-design, and this month it starts in earnest. Our long rectangular garden, large for a regular semi-detached house, has gradually become divided in two, the bottom end now taken over by the vegetable and cut flower patches. I plan to formalise this, splitting up what I’m grandly calling the leisure garden and the working garden. Overgrown, invasive shrubs that have outgrown their position are going, and new beds are being dug (my least favourite job in the garden, but the puppy is an enthusiastic helper).

Creating a garden for leisure

A local tradesman has just started a business building garden structures, and a new pergola should be going in as you read this, to provide year-round cover for eating and drinking outside. I’m hoping for as close to a French orchard feel as you can get in our Scottish climate - roses, apple trees, lavender. We’ll start with the basic choice of trees and shrubs, plus an edited selection of the existing planting, and build up over time. I’m imagining summer evening dinners, candles and long wooden tables, winter round the fire pit with strings of lights, and clematis scrambling up round the poles in spring.

Keeping up with all the flowers

When I’m not getting carried away with new ideas, I’m trying to keep the cutting garden ticking over for as long as possible. Deadheading everything in sight, picking as much as I can - dahlias have finally sprung to life, a mixture of carefully selected varieties from Sarah Raven (try ‘Evanah’ next year) and cheap pots from Morrisons which have frankly done just as well. Cosmos ‘Purity’ is late this year but now flowering faster than I can pick. If I’ve got one garden issue, it’s that I don’t like yellow, but sunflowers are an exception, and I highly recommend the multi-headed miniature variety ‘Vanilla Ice’ both for picking and growing in borders. I need to remember to sow hardy annuals, to extend the picking season earlier into spring next year (I have sweet peas and love-in-a-mist), and to water the fuchsia cuttings, all taken far too late this year but with fingers crossed.

The magic of container gardening

On the patio, my pots of fuchsias, roses, patio buddleias (try the Buzz series) and hebes are trundling along happily, all the better for the odd rainy day now when I don’t have to remember to water them. Next year I’m planning more and more pots, both front and back. Before moving here 8 years ago, we lived in a succession of Glasgow flats gardening in front yard spaces in pots, and I would happily have as many pots as my garden will allow. However tiny your space, it’s amazing what you can grow in containers - think about planting evergreens now to give you some structure and interest over winter.

What’s happening in your garden right now? Email, DM on Instagram, comment below - we’d love to know about your autumn plans and outdoors life, any questions, or ideas you have.