Fork it
The Harvest Festival church flower rota comes by email nowadays, but I suspect that the instructions it bears have remained the same for years - “Choose autumn colours”. This immediately conjures up reds, oranges and yellows, but on looking out of the window for inspiration, I see that the flowers still valiantly providing autumn colour in my garden are predominantly purple.
The most obvious purple flower associated with autumn is the Michaelmas daisy or aster. I removed a lot of this last winter, as it had become too invasive, but I did leave a clump to ensure some back-of-border height and late season colour. It is an aster turbellinus, which has rather anaemic lilac-coloured flowers in airy sprays on 4ft wiry stems, so I was right to eradicate most of it. Instead I’ve been recommended to plant aster x frikartii “Monch” for a more compact patch of purple, which will provide a long display from mid summer to late autumn. I already have a well-established stalwart of the autumn border in sedum spectabile (the ice plant). This is more on the mauve colour spectrum, but it darkens as the season advances and there are varieties with dark red stems too e.g. “Purple Emperor”.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the most robust flowers left in autumn are those annuals that have self-seeded from last year’s display. The very fact that they have survived seed dispersal, germination, growth through wind, rain and sun (or lack of) plus the attentions of pests means that they are the best adapted to their environment and will produce much more vigorous plants than the ones which have been nurtured in a garden centre and transplanted into your garden. Unfortunately it is usually unwelcome weeds which fulfil these survival criteria, but some annuals obligingly return year after year. Amaranthus paniculatus has produced a spectacular magenta display, some nearly 4 feet high, with their upright panicles (unlike their droopy cousin amaranthus caudatus or love-lies-bleeding). Another generous self-seeder from last year has been cleome (the spider flower). Statuesque stems bearing large spiky blooms have filled gaps in the border, some mauve and some white. Finally, a great self-seeder which is a short-lived perennial rather than an annual is verbena bonariensis. I love seeing its purple flowers atop tall thin stems dotted around the border and it’s particularly gratifying, because they cost absolutely nothing!
