As I write, with the door open in the milking barn, the rain is falling in a deluge. The surrounding hills have vanished behind a veil of stair rods and the drains are gargling and guttural. We wait for the sound of a crack and a crash as the poplars lose a limb or worse, their entire footing. Never heavier than now in full, late season foliage.
The garden bows, weighted, wet and heavy with seed. Overhanging the paths that just a couple of days ago, in dry September weather, were passable. We push our way through, drenched from the waist down to find free footfall in the clearings that still allow us to take it all in. The verbena, which just last weekend were so full of air, are bent as if touching their toes and the bedraggled pennisetum now soaked and motionless. A dry day will see the planting mostly bounce back, but autumn is surely upon us.
The beginning of the decline is always contrasted by a late push. The cyclamen huddled in niches that they have sought for themselves under the hawthorns, bold with new energy. These latecomers are our mainstays and provide the optimism to counter the inevitable melancholy and I am always happy to see more seedlings of originally planted parents. The seed, moved by ants, find purchase in places you would never consider for planting. In the paths and the cracks in the steps to make this place feel lived-in. Soon the colchicum will spear, then the autumn flowering crocus and the brightness of otherworldly-pink nerine.
The relaxed mood of now is one of the things that makes September special. A time to mostly let go and observe before the serious business of work begins in the autumn. The chasmanthium and patrinia are better this year for seeding along both sides of the path and the numbers being amplified. They make the best of companions with the Anemone hupehensis ‘Splendens’, my favourite of the Japanese Wind Anemone. I am pleased to see it doing well here, but where it is now being swallowed up in a slowly maturing garden, it is time to make an adjustment. Seven years in and I am beginning to see where we need the benefit of gentle intervention. The dominance of the Persicaria amplexicaulis ‘Blackfield’, which this year, after a wet winter, have outcompeted their companions. The eupatorium and actaea showing me where they need a cooler position. Somewhere deeper into the beds where the asters are now being buried and need liberating. Time for change.
I take time with my notebook, so that the falling away that happens in winter doesn’t erase my memory of scale and what is truly happening at the end of the growing season. Notes made now to inject new vitality into the garden will become actions made when the energy is in the ascendant again towards the end of winter. For now though we will delay the inevitable waning enough to prolong the season and stay ahead of the inevitable curve. The rain-bedraggled dahlias will be deadheaded to embrace their autumnal glory and the seed of Cedric’s Sweet Pea gathered and then sown in October, so that they can do what they do in the wild and make the best of a mild autumn to overwinter in readiness for an early start next spring. Time to watch and be in the now, to make note for the future and to gently begin the engagement with what is yet to come.
Words: Dan Pearson | Photographs: Huw Morgan
Published 7 September 2024
