Autumn's Unexpected Colours

This Autumn's colours have been spectacular, full of golden oranges and bold reds. They looked gorgeous in my local square and reflected in the small lake I visited recently in Leicestershire.  

                                Autumn maple and plane leaves painted by my son Charlie in 2014                                

All these leaves can make an invaluable mulch for winter. Mine have been rotting down since last autumn and now I'm using them to cover the not-completely-hardy plants. 

But I have been enchanted by this year's unexpected colours in the garden, perhaps because many of the plants suddenly came to life again after the drought and put on a splendid final show. 

The witch hazel has taken a few years to settle in but now produces a fine buttery-gold display of leaves. This has been its best year so far.

Witch hazel

      

Nandina

The nandina (a sort of relation to bamboo) has an attractive  purple sheen added to its silvery-green leaves. Later it will have bunches of small bright red berries but they are for winter.     

The leaves of the anonymous fig cutting, now nearly a year old, have turned a stained-glass yellow emphasizing their elegant leaf shapes. 

Fig

All the roses are flowering again, some of them with great abandon. Fruits can be wonderfully colourful too. My Rosa glauca has a profusion of deep red berries contrasting well with the sea green leaves and later cheerful on their own. They look good in a jug with nandina leaves. My sister has a self-seeded crab apple in her garden whose tiny apples are a brilliant red. 

               

              Rosa glauca hips in my garden and a crab apple in my sister's garden

The sky blue  geranium Johnson's Blue is flowering again, and a sedum in the front bed is clashing happily with the still floriferous bright red pelargonium.

                 

          Sedums and pelargoniums                                           Geranium Johnson's Blue

 All this lasting right to the end of October and no watering necessary.