NOVEMBER IN THE GARDEN
There can be a tendency to think of autumn colour as coming from trees, shrubs and climbers. While subtler than the knockout punch of, say, a scarlet acer or Virginia creeper, Sarah Price's predominantly herbaceous plantings in the back garden at The Exchange have a sophisticated drama of their own. There's no bright red here, but instead asters and euphorbias turning palest yellow, terracotta and chocolate brown, given definition in associations with solid, glossy evergreens like Corsican hellebores and acanthus. I've learnt the value in autumn of juxtaposing the decaying with the clean, like the glaucous freshness of Euphorbia characias subsp. wulfenii against bleached grasses in the gravel area.
Ageratina altissima 'Chocolate' is worth singling out as something that earns its keep at every moment in the growing season, emerging as a dark vertical among spring greens and bearing long-lasting fluffy white flowers from late summer. It's at its best now though, dying back in as many shades of rust as you'll find in the corrugated fence. Elaeagnus 'Quicksilver', a Cedric Morris cultivar, continues the metallic theme; its willowy leaves before they fall put me in mind of the magic clay Ho's been experimenting with in the ceramics workshop, that when fired turns to bronze.
The volunteers and I had fun planting up winter pots on the terrace last week. They're against a north facing wall, hence the choice of shade tolerant evergreen ferns (Polystichum setiferum 'Herrenhausen'; Asplenium scolopendrium; Asplenium trichomanes; Cyrtomium fortunei var. clivicola) and Hakonechloa macra, the latter kindly donated to us after designer Mark Grehan used them in a pop-up garden for Hermès. They'll provide interest all through the winter, with the grasses gradually turning gold then bronze to contrast with the rich greens. As we wanted the pots to reflect the wider garden, we included some senescent rudbeckia, also from Hermès, purely for their dark, graphic stems and seedheads. These perennials like sun, but this won't matter during the dormant season when they'll inhabit these containers; they'll be removed and positioned somewhere more horticulturally correct when they come into growth next year. Finally, we tucked in bulbs of the pretty pale multiheaded Narcissus 'Minnow' for a spring flourish, and topped with a green blanket of moss.
