power plant

My title actually has nothing to do with the contents of my vase today, but is connected to the weather I braved this morning to cut some materials for vases…. weather for ducks! It also refers to my dear little wooden duck, Nora, which my sister gave me some years ago as a birthday present. I think this is her debut on In a Vase on Monday, the lovely meme that Cathy at Rambling in the Garden thought up almost 12 years ago. The larger red vase contains Chrysopsis, which I know I am constantly raving about, but just look at those cheerful yellow flowers at the end of October, still unspoilt after a week of rain! The white daisies are Aster Ashvi, one of the last asters to flower and a lovely splash of light on these dismal days. The smaller vase contains some Spiraea and Physocarpus trimmings, and three of my last Calendula. There are still a couple of Calendula plants in bud under the shelter of an evergreen tree in a pot. If they manage to flower after this cold and wet sp...

(Click on any image to enlarge) In the woods in October  

I often find confused flowers popping up in the ‘wrong’ season; Hellebores in summer, Primulas in December etc. Currently I have a Pulsatilla in bud and two Cowslips in flower – one of which I cut for today’s vase. There is also a frilly summer Dianthus flowering for a second time – much later than usual – so I cut one stem of that too. Some of my ‘tender’ Salvias have now survived several winters in my Herb Bed, and I think they may have adapted to our climate. The very well-drained soil there certainly helps. I cut a stem of the toughest of them all: S. greggii ‘Aromax Blue’, and remembered that they do actually look best in the early autumn here. I then found a few odd bits and pieces, wondering if they really went together or not, or if they complimented each other for precisely the reason that they are all different. (Hence the title ‘Fusion’!) These included some late ground cover roses (‘Palmengarten Frankfurt’), a late Echinacea, a white Japanese anemone (‘Honorine Jobert’...

It may seem late in the year to start a new series, but since my Wild and Weedy Wednesdays fizzled out this year I need something to get me blogging more frequently again. So once a month (about mid-month) I will share five favourite plants for that month. Feel free to join me! So, with October being my favourite month of the year it is hard to keep it to five, but here goes. Aster pringlei/ Aster ericoides ‘Pink Star’ This is one of the Asters now called Symphyotrichum, but I have to look up how to spell that all the time! This aster has featured in some of my Monday vases recently and is indeed a ‘star’. The original plant has spread, and the seedlings vary a little in colour and height, so on average it is about 60 cm tall. It requires no extra water all summer, unlike some of my other tall asters, as the leaves are very small.  The flowers are larger than most A. ericoides and appear from late September. They last extremely well, into November. Miscanthus ‘Federweiße’...

The garden has been very calm and quiet this week (apart from the jays tearing up our grass for bugs!) and although we have seen very little sun, there is a glow to everything. Many of our trees are turning a gorgeous buttery colour and foliage in general is taking on a yellow tinge. So when I saw that a couple of Calendula have survived the cold nights so far, I decided to make a golden vase for this week’s ‘In a Vase on Monday’. If you haven’t come across this meme before, do go and visit Cathy at Rambling in the Garden where her vase will be posted and you will find links to other vases from around the world. I started off with a stem of Euphorbia ‘Goldener Turm’, which can be seen in the foreground (the Sunshine Bed) in the first photo. The flowers are a lime green/golden colour in summer, but now the whole plant is glowing, stems included. It works well for holding stems of the white Anemone japonica (Honorine Jobert) upright – Honorine is still looking pretty and has a beau...

We had our first frost last week – several nights in a row in fact. Fortunately frost barely affects the garden in autumn as the annuals are all but over – Zinnias got caught and the Cosmos are limping a little! But the grasses and perennials make up for minor damage and I picked a large bunch of asters between the rainshowers yesterday. Most are at their peak now, so it is a good time to share some of them. They really are the stars of the garden in October, and I have quite a nice mix of colours and heights now, with some interesting seedlings appearing too. Some of them must not be sterile, as I thought they were. At the front left we have the silvery mauve ‘Silberteppich’ (Silver Carpet?), a short and compact plant with an incredible shimmer to it. This star really does shine brightly. And centre front, a slightly taller blue one I can’t name at the moment – perhaps I will find the label later in the autumn when everything dies back. The deep pink (left) is Alma Pötschke – Al...