Take time to admire the changing of the season

It’s autumn colour weather, and I’m conscious that it will be a number of days between when I wrote this and when you read it, so, let’s hope the sun is shining and you can admire the changing of the season.

A lot of plants and trees are giving us one last blast of colour before their winter breaks – I’m speaking, of course, about foliage colour.

As plants go into dormancy, they shut down the food supply to the foliage, and, if you get some frost at night, it changes the sugar in the foliage – hence the autumn colour.

Some plants put on a better show than others; some do it for a short time and some retain their autumn colour for weeks and weeks. That makes them my favourites.

They will transform your garden this time of year; you will get all the colours – burnt orange, flame red and butter yellow.

The fading flowers of hydrangeas, especially the modern varieties, have lovely autumn colour, in my opinion rivalling their summer blooms. They are quite easily dried and can be used in flower arrangements all through the winter. But that’s for another day.

Let’s get back to the autumn colour; my number one choice is Japanese Maples. There are many varieties, all producing fantastic autumn colour in different shades. The top five are Acer Japonicum Aureum, not stunning during the summer, but turns golden yellow for weeks on end this time of year.

Acer Japonicum Vitofolium starts to turn colour in early September, turning redder by the day until it eventually succumbs in mid-November.

Acer Crimson Queen, one of the split leaf varieties, steals the show all summer long with its coppery red foliage, which intensifies just about now.

Acer Sango Kaku, beautiful all year round, even when it drops the foliage, reveals its coral colour bark.

Acer Skeeters Broom, a relatively new variety from New Zealand, upright growing but compact with almost maroon foliage all summer, it goes out in a blaze.

Their larger cousins (by that I mean trees) also give fantastic colour. Acer Griseum, a small tree, is hard to beat, and a relative newcomer Acer Freemanii Jeffers Red is now my best selling tree.

For golden yellow, as a contrast plant Princeton’s Gold, I’ve just got in a new variety, Acer Palmatum Ryu Sen. It is a distinctly weeping variety with finely cut green foliage all summer, going out in a blaze of glory.

Don’t forget your regular Beech tree. It is beyond compare.