New month sees abundance of colour in castle grounds
September is the beginning of autumn in the Arundel Castle gardens. It’s one of my favourite times of the year – there’s an abundance of colour throughout the gardens and bountiful harvests in our organic kitchen garden, with apples and pears, kale, cabbages, cauliflowers, runner beans and calabrese.
The plants creating a kaleidoscope of colour at the moment are the Rudbeckia fulgida ‘Goldsturm’, a wonderful autumn perennial with its striking yellow petals and black centre; they flower through autumn and even into winter here. We use them as cut flowers for the castle vases and to add splashes of colour to our tropical borders alongside our stunning Canna lilies with their enormous leaves.
Our array of ‘Babylon’ dahlias are showing off with their enormous flower heads standing proud in the cut flower garden, giving our visitors the ‘wow factor’ and putting smiles on their faces as they walk by the riot of colour. These dahlias should flower right to up to the end of October.
Our wonderful collection of roses are having their late second flowering this year, the pretty pink ‘Harlow Carr’ hedging roses lead you into the rose garden just with their scent alone!
Salvia’s are another wonderful plant to add brightness to a garden at this time of year with all their diversity. Here are a few that we have in flower at the moment, Salvia patens is a very popular bright blue and Salvia greggii is a pretty red one, Salvia ‘Hot Lips’ is white with red petals shaped as lips, they also look good planted in pots, Salvia uliginosa with pale blue petals and long stems are ideal in a herbaceous border.
In the organic kitchen garden it’s hard to believe that it will soon be time to harvest our early ‘Discovery’ apples. It’s great when you see one or two fruits drop to the ground, signalling it is nearly ready to pick, or you can check if they are ready with a more traditional method by just gently twisting the fruit and it should part with its stalk intact.
Some of the great varieties of eating apples are Jupiter, a cross between a Cox’s Orange Pippin and Star King, its large red and green fruits are bursting with sweet juice. The king of culinary apples that we grow has to be the extra-large Peasegoods Nonsuch, a Lincolnshire apple first produced in 1858; each apple is so large that you only need a few to produce a delicious crumble or apple pie!
For a local West Sussex apple you can’t go wrong with the wonderfully crisp and richtasting Egremont Russet with a slightly nutty flavour, cultivated at nearby Petworth House in around 1872 by The Earl of Egremont. For juicy pears Deacons and Concord from the Isle of Wight are magnificent; ours are fan-trained along our east facing old brick walls.
If you would like to get inspired by seeing what plants you could be growing in your gardens The Arundel Castle plant fair will take place on September 19 included in the standard garden or castle entry ticket, with specialist growers and nurseries. There’s plenty to choose from. The stallholders, who are all experts in their field, will be at hand to advise on selection and care.
Happy gardening!
A few tips from the castle garden team for September:
○ If you haven’t already done so, order your spring bulbs, such as tulips, daffodils, hyacinths, camassia, ready to plant in October or November.
○ Cut and dry herbs for winter use.
○ Scarify and aerate established lawns
○ Reduce watering ventilation in glass houses.
○ Sow or turf new lawns
○ Plant out spring cabbages. and
For more details on Arundel Castle, its plant fair and other events, visit arundelcastle.org