Nick Bailey uses evergreens for amazing autumn colour
Try these stunning species to keep your plot ablaze with fiery hues this season
The majority of plants with fiery, autumncoloured leaves show off their riches for just a few weeks before dropping. Stunning as these fleeting shows are, once the leaves are gone the plant is li le more than a skeleton awaiting the arrival of spring, like the rest of us! True, the short-lived nature of these colours is part of their charm, but what if there were plants that took on autumn colour yet remained evergreen? What if there were a set of plants that were not only year-round in their foliage display but took on dramatically different hues and pale es as the seasons progressed. Well, there are a very small group of species that do this.
Perhaps the poster child for these is Cryptomeria japonica ‘Elegans Compacta’. This Asian conifer forms a compact, 2m (6½ft) cone of foliage which looks fluffy and almost cloudlike. Through spring and summer it has mid-green foliage, but this becomes a beautiful russet tone in autumn, which persists through winter.
Another conifer with a burnished winter look is Thuja occidentalis ‘Fire Chief’. This conifer adopts multiple guises through the year. In spring the new foliage is gold, followed by a bronze tone over summer and taking on ruddy notes in autumn and winter. It forms a neat bun of around 1x1m (3¼x3¼ft), making it perfect for small gardens.
Conifers aren’t the only evergreens with tricks up their sleeves – some shrubs do it, too. Mahonia japonica, for example. This garden stalwart dispenses a double dose of delight in the fall with wands of yellow flowers and rose es of evergreen foliage which takes on yellow, orange and red tones through autumn and winter. It’s a stocky shrub of 2x2m (6½x6½ft), which can tolerate a rejuvenative prune.
On a larger scale it’s worth growing cotoneaster ‘Cornubia’. This tree reaches some 6m (20ft) with an open canopy. It brings white summer flowers and berries in late summer and autumn but has the added benefit of being semi-evergreen, meaning around half of its leaves take on yellow and orange hues, while the rest remain evergreen. The
green, yellow and orange, coupled with red berries is a dramatic autumn look, followed by winter foliage.
My final two top autumn colour evergreens are Nandina domestica and trachelospermum. The former carries fiery winter leaves yet remains evergreen and even has bright red and yellow spring foliage. The trachelospermum is a brilliant jasmine-scented climber which will thrive in sun or shade. It too remains evergreen but has a bright splash of fall hues from late summer through winter.