AUTUMN is here, along with frost, log fires and the final flowers of summer.
Walking round the garden early this morning, always a beautiful time of day, I was amazed at how many plants were still in bloom despite the unusually early start to winter.
Back in October a friend kindly gave me a tray of tiny gaillardias that he had raised from seed and which have flowered non-stop all summer, doubtless helped by the unusually wet season.
Gaillardias are annuals or short-lived perennials, whose stout, branching stems carry clusters of daisy-like flowers in vivid, eye catching shades of red and yellow.
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The stems reach up to waist height and last well indoors.
My kind donor tells me they self-seed mildly, but I've enjoyed them so much I'm taking no chances and am ordering a packet from Mr. Fothergills (www.mrfothergills.com.au) now for a spring sowing.
Salvias are de rigeur for colour in the autumn garden and it's fun trying a few new ones every year. This year I'm loving 'So Cool', a ground-hugging mound covered since February in lilac-purple flowers. It comes from Plant Growers Australia (PGA) on whom you can rely for a good plant - if PGA's label says it's dry- and frost-tolerant when established, it is.
I also tried a new meadow sage, Salvia nemorosa 'May Night' with 40 x centimetre spikes of violet flowers standing well up above fuzzy dark green foliage. It started blooming last November and has been flowering ever since. It's available from David Glenn's Lambley Nursery, www.lambley.com.au.
Russian Sage is a sub-shrub or woody perennial with serrated, pale olive leaves and arching sprays of long-lasting mauve flowers.
It's a fabulous plant growing into a neat, upright clump that fits into any planting scheme.
Sadly, there was one bad fairy at its christening: it suffers from terrible BO. Its original name was Perovskia atri plicifolia but it has now been reclassified as a salvia, S. yangii, which makes sense as it certainly smells like one.
It needs full sun to look its best and may take a year or two to settle down. Easily propagated from stem cuttings.
Low growing Achillea 'Credo' makes a good contrast to all this mauve and purple, with pale cream flowers and ferny, grey-green foliage. It too flowers for months if kept dead headed.
Deciduous ceanothus are lovely background shrubs and bloom several times over summer. C. 'Gloire de Versailles' has puffy, powder blue flowers while those of C. 'Marie Simon' are pale pink.
Like all ceanothus they need a regular prune to retain their bushy shape but are otherwise trouble free and coming from California they're indifferent to heat and drought.
Lastly, garlic chives (Allium tuberosum) have starry white flowers and flat, grassy leaves, handy when your kitchen chives have been cut to the ground and you're waiting for them to re-sprout.
Les Musgrave and his botanical artist wife Elaine's sensational garden, The Kaya, (68 Cleary's Lane, Wildes Meadow) is open on May 1 and 2, 10am to 4pm, entry $10. Visit www.myopengarden.com.au.
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