Allow your garden to have a last hurrah before autumn with our tips for late-season colour and interest...
The late summer garden can look a little bedraggled. Perennials are going to seed and heat, insect damage and weeds can bring an unloved feel to lawns, beds and borders. Unkempt hedges need a haircut.
This is when a gardener is worth their weight in gold! As trained horticulturalists, we know the tricks and techniques to give our Cambridge gardens an early autumn refresh. We've learnt how to inject colour and calm to the unruly year-end – rekindling its life and beauty once again.
1. Tidy up... but not too much
There's still a lot of life to be had in the late summer garden, and not just through plant life. Wildlife is looking for places to hibernate and overwinter, in ivy and shrubs and seed heads, so don't be too quick to clear and clip.
Focus on trimming damaged or diseased foliage. Late flowering annuals and perennials, such as geraniums and penstemons, will also relish some deadheading and could reward you with a second flush of (albeit smaller) flowers.
An easy way to give the garden a boost is to mulch border with wood bark between the plants. This not only suppresses weeds but gives the garden a more manicured feel.
Deadhead flowers to encouarge late blooms but leave others for structural interest
2. Inject some late-season colour
It's easy for borders to lack oomph in early autumn, as heat can make plants exhaust themselves early.
Plug gaps with late bloomers such as asters, rudbeckia, crocosmia and helenium. Sedums really come into their own at this time of year. The thick, fleshy foliage and large 'platforms' of flowers bring colour and structure. And as temperatures dip, they change colour – even looking good into winter with a dusting of frost. They like sandy, gravelly soil and some support for leggy stems.
Agastache, with its spiked violet flowers, also provides a long season of interest and is loved by butterflies. If you have a shady garden, go for Japanese anemones with their candy-floss colours that can flower right through to October.
Plug gaps in borders with late colour from asters
4. Add texture
Grasses are a lovely way to add movement and sound to a tired border. And they come in all sorts of shapes, sizes, and a green-to-gold palette. You can even plant into pots for instant impact. We love bronze Carex testacea, or bright yellow Hakonechloa 'Aureola' for this. Aureola will tolerate a shady spot and looks fabulous shining with late and low sunshine.
5. Spruce up containers
Containers and pots are an easy way to spruce up the garden and add colour and height to tired areas. Simply moving them into different locations can give you a new view. Keep perennial plants that are still performing in situ and fill the empty spaces with coleus, chrysanthemums (and grasses as above), or evergreen perennials such as phormium. If you add cool-season plants such as primulas and pansies your pots can take you through to winter.
6. Renovate your lawn
Turf can get particularly stressed in a warm summer, so continue your watering regime with two soaks a week, gradually reducing as the temperatures cool. This helps the grass develop a deeper root system and not start curling up towards the water source.
Early autumn is a good time to scarify lawns i.e. remove the thatch material to get oxygen to the roots. We like to feed the grass with organic feed to keep it looking healthy for longer. We'll overseed bare patches in September too, choosing a grass type according to what kind of lawn it is i.e. shaded, multi-use, etc. Ryegrass is the most hard-wearing and great for family lawns, while ‘chewings fescue’ will give you that glossy look.
7. Prune hedges
Pruning in later summer can stimulate a new flush of growth. Privet and hawthorn will all benefit from a snip in later summer. But avoid cutting back spring-blooming shrubs, such as forsythia and ceanothus, as these will be setting buds for next year.
Give box a final haircut in late summer
Our box hedges get their final hair cut in late summer. Any earlier and the soft, new growth is vulnerable to leaf scorch from sun and drying winds. Any later and it can be damaged by frost. Pruning at this time of year can give a pleasing crispness to overgrown hedging and shrubs, and immediately make your garden feel cared for.
Need help refreshing your garden? Learn more about our Garden Refresh and get in touch today.
