​Oh my word, THE perfect Autumn day - colours galore, blue skies and crisp air.

If you can, make sure you take a visit to Knoll Gardens in Dorset soon. It is the perfect place to see how to not just incorporate, but really celebrate one of our favourite plants in the garden.....grasses. They are so versatile and absolutely do set the tone in a space.

​Sedums are also doing their thing beautifully at the moment, with the stunning deep burgundy of ‘Jose Aubergine’ and the fresher deeper pinks of ‘Autumn Joy’ (perfect name!). Dark purple-black fine strappy leaves of Ophiopogon planiscapus ‘Nigrescens’ pick up the deeper purple colours leading round to brighter Verbena officinalis 'Bampton’, Thyme and Salvia officinalis 'Tricolor'.  A structural evergreen backdrop sets the colours off fantastically.

There really is so much choice - go brighten these shortening days up with colour.....

Genuinely the best bit about designing, building and planting a garden, is coming back to the space once the plants have had a chance to get established in their new home!

Trees and interesting shrubs always make a good first impression, but it's the smaller herbaceous plants, ferns and grasses that fill out the space, blur the boundaries and soften all of the edges.

On visiting a garden this week that we completed just over a year ago, we were delighted to see our vision for the space realised. We had designed the sloping site with gentle stone steps, cor-ten steel retaining walls and wide resting platforms, intentionally leaving large planting spaces between levels. Steps going in different directions along with the large planting pockets entice you to journey through whichever way you please.

Now, hardy ferns spill over the steps, grasses arch over the steel walls, and perennials like Astilbe creep through the gaps. As you walk through the shady side of the garden, you find yourself slowing down to walk between the planting, noticing all of the different textures, unaware of any hard edges.

We always liken planting in the garden to soft furnishings in the house - they provide colour and interest, pull the scheme together, and soften all the hard edges.
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So go on and get planting!

​Whilst we have missed doing our daily 'green light' posts (which we started in lockdown), it has been lovely getting back to work.
This week, we have been planting in Cambridgeshire - a scheme for the garden that we designed, that is nearly complete.
Lots of evergreen structure, tall grasses and floaty perennials will weave their way through new gravel beds and lawn borders.
We'll post pictures of the finished project, when the rest of the hard landscaping is complete, but here are a few of the lovely plants that we chose which really suit the architecture and colour of our clients' home;
- Achillea 'Terracotta'
- Heucherella 'Hopscotch'
- Taxus 'Fastigiata'

​Grasses are one of our favourite plants to use in a scheme.....and there are so many to choose from!
Whether you prefer a 'neat' short grass like Carex, or a billowing ornamental grass like Stipa gigantea, these plants provide some fantastic contrasting texture in the border.
Grasses look great as part of a mixed planting scheme (modernising an existing border) or planted en masse on their own. Some species also offer movement, which can be very important in a static space. And of course the shadows they provide against walls or hard landscaping give them added presence.
Our go-to grass is Anemanthale lessoniana (or pheasant's tail grass) as it is evergreen and turns to fantastic shades of bronze in the autumn and winter. It does only lasts a couple of years, but self-seeds so easily, that you may never have to buy a replacement!

And so the week began with an #RHS 'Members Day' for the first day of the week at #RHSChelsea. Normally a day for the gardens to really showcase themselves with eye-catching performers and getting the all important celebrity visits to help promote the garden and its charity, sponsors and good causes.
Yesterday #BBC coverage focused on colour and how important it is to have in the garden (even if it's lots of shades of green), and what ideas we can take away with us. Using darker foliage to offset other brighter colours and bring balance to a scheme was one idea, picking out different elements of the plants from stems to bark to foliage to bring a scheme together. This is something we always try to do with our planting schemes to get the most from plants year round.
Another idea was how pastel colours or a muted scheme choosing a harmonising palette of one to two colours can bring that sense of peace and tranquility.
One of our favourites from last year's show was the Montessori garden which used colour to dramatic and joyful effect and was definitely not muted! Picking out colour in the materials used, with the plants to help bring cohesion and fun to the whole garden.
Using plants and bulbs in containers is another way to move colour around the garden and change it up through the seasons and year to year. Even if it's just on your window sill - have a go!

Today we're highlighting the often forgotten, but very important ground cover.
These plants are so important in helping a garden look more established by covering the ground quickly, so that there is less bare soil, which at the same time suppresses weeds (an added bonus).
All of the plants featured here work well in shady conditions:

• Pachysandra terminalis is a fabulously fresh looking ground cover plant, which throws up little white flowers in early summer (pictured here spreading around an urn in our clients' garden).
• Geraniums are such useful ground cover plants, but make sure you choose a hardy variety, so that you can enjoy the foliage all year round
• Brunnera macrophylla 'Jack Frost' as the name suggests, has eye-catching marbled white foliage
• Euphorbias are mainly sun-loving, but this variety - Euphorbia amygdaloides var. robbiae - is very happy in the shade
• Viola labradorica has lovely heart shaped leaves with a profusion of purple nodding flowers all summer long
• Vinca minor helpfully spreads like a carpet under trees and different varieties have white or purple flowers.

Now that the garden centres are open, make sure you roll out these low maintenance carpets!

One of those seasonal moments that really is a showstopper, is the emergence of Alliums, in this case, Allium hollandicum 'Purple Sensation' or Dutch Garlic.
There are many varieties offering different colours and shapes but for reliable shows year on year, this one is hard to beat!
Alliums are herbaceous perennials that you can plant as bulbs in autumn or as plants now. Their linear or strap-shaped leaves, which can have the scent of onion or garlic, normally die down by flowering time. The flower heads start as tight green buds and gradually unfurl (although it can seem that it happens overnight!) into perfectly round purple heads.
On closer inspection, each head is a mass of small, star-shaped flowers with a lovely vivid rosy-purple colour.
They work really well in flower borders, amongst other flowers and grasses, in both formal and informal planting schemes.
To get even more from them in your garden, you can leave the flower heads on and watch as they turn from purple to green and then wonderful spherical seed-heads which can be cut in spring and bought indoors.
Thanks to our lovely client Keith, who put together this beautiful video of the Alliums we planted in his garden.

Wisteria really do put on a show at this time of year. Displaying stunning long pannicles of scented flowers, they make a fantastic feature of a house or archway.
This perennial plant can survive up to 100 years and has long been associated with romance. In the Victorian language of flowers, wisteria symbolizes “over passionate love or obsession,” referring to the choking nature of the vine.
Actually it's their woody stems that help identify where the plant originates from - if the stems twine clockwise it’s a Japanese Wisteria (Wisteria floribunda), but counterclockwise, then it's likely the plant originates from China (Wisteria sinensis), which is actually the most common one found here in the UK.
Unfortunately Wisteria have a reputation of being tricky to grow. Well, they do require lots of support and regular pruning when they are young, they are very thirsty for water and food, and they only flower once the tree is about 12 years old. But looking at these displays, it would seem that the old saying is right - good things come to those that wait.