The season of mists and mellow fruitfulness has descended over my far flung corner of the world, dear wildflowers. And the cottage garden is a tangle of spent summer blooms and drooping seed heads, nodding gently in the breeze. It is wild and weedy, and all the plants are tinged with burnt orange and caramel now. Rosy pink camellia petals and golden oak leaves flutter to the ground, and the earth breathes a long, deep sigh before settling into her winter slumber.
As the high heat of summer gives way to cool breezes and chill mornings, this little garden goblin can finally get on with the busy work of the season. Weeding, pruning, digging up bulbs and pulling out all the spent summer annuals. It is so satisfying to tidy up the cottage garden, but even on these cool Autumn days, it can be a hot and sweaty job for a wildflower! Phewwf!
I have gathered the cosmos and zinnias I like best, and now I’ll move on to selecting my favourite dahlias of the season, so I’ll know which bulbs to keep for next year, and which ones to give away as gifts. I’m looking at you, Mum!
You may remember the episode where I began planning this new garden at Belladonna Cottage, and how I wanted a colour palette of plum and lavender, apricot, raspberry, and dragon fire orange. I made my selections from pictures in seed catalogues but, it is only now, after a summer spent in observation, that I can truly know the way each individual plant expresses itself, seeing their glorious display of shape and colour in context. The myriad hues and shades, when set against each other, blend and soften, or contrast and pop... and some, of course, clash rather unfortunately. And you can’t really know until you see it all come to life.
Pale pastel and whites flower, for example, lend a sweet, softening effect to their companions in the garden, so I’ll definitely be planting purity white cosmos again, along with whirling butterflies, creamy David Austin roses and white velvet salvias. The same goes for foliage colour, which is why I love to add in silvery saltbush, white sage and lamb’s ears.
I now know, roughly how tall each flower grows, how leafy and sprawling they can be, how large the blooms are, and in particular, the exact shade of their petals. After all, it’s really just another artwork, but this one is made with flowers, instead of paint and paper. I don’t know about you, but I’m really happy with how it all turned out, and I can’t wait to try again next season, with my shortlist of showstoppers.
It’s truly incredible how many seeds are produced from a single plant, which began as a tiny seed itself, just 6 or 7 months earlier. I’m almost certain that Mr. Rose and I could start a whole flower farm from this summer’s cut flower patch alone.
I’m not sure we’ll find a place for all of these beautiful babies come spring, so I might pop a limited number of mixed seed packets up on my online store for Australian garden faeries to enjoy... they’re far too pretty to sit in my potting shed in the dark, and I’d much rather imagine them blooming in cottage gardens across the country, delighting bees and butterflies and inspiring a new generation of green thumbs.
If you’d like to see this episode in full, head on over to ‘The Rambling Rose’…