WARM CORNER

As the days draw in, focus shifts indoors, intensifying the demand for plant decorations in and around it. With so few flowering plants available, I am grateful I can call on autumn’s rich tapestry to sustain me. This mock barrel vessel, made from oak slats and steel hoops, has galvanised handles to make it easier to move around. Here it’s dressed with warm autumn foliage and berries along with a few hardy flowering plants to lift the mood.

How to achieve the look

This is a temporary display made for a special occasion. The fiery autumn foliage contrasts well with the dark-green leaves of Skimmia japonica subsp. reevesiana, a hermaphrodite form that produces vermillion berries. As a rule, it is aesthetically more rewarding to set vibrant autumn colour off with a steadfast evergreen. I can remember seeing the large, brilliant-red leaves of Vitis coignetiae scrambling through an ivy at Great Dixter in East Sussex and thinking how heavenly the effect was in the gentle October light. Above the Skimmia is Mahonia japonica, which turns red in the autumn when it has been stressed. Here in the garden we have restricted this plant by growing it in a pot that is smaller than ideal, which encourages it to turn a smouldering shade of deep red. The ochre notes are supplied by Cornus sanguinea ‘Anny’s Winter Orange’, which also boasts vivid stem colour throughout winter. On the right with sumptuous ripe-fig purple foliage, is x Sycoparrotia semidecidua ‘Purple Haze’. Clusters of the fresh, yellow-green flower spikes of Mahonia x media ‘Charity’ top the display, and dotted through the arrangement are the soft-pink spidery flowers of Nerine bowdenii ‘Vesta K’. In cold, still weather the deciduous autumn leaves in this arrangement might cling on for a fortnight but will shatter in warmer conditions. Either way, when the show is over, the arrangement will be dismantled.