The garden in... October

Kari-Astri Davies is savouring the season’s palette, choosing tulip bulbs and sowing for an early show

couple of pots of lily-flowered orange ‘Ballerina’ for the scent; maybe combined with the classic dark purple, almost black, ‘Queen of Night’. They should come into flower at a similar time.

The mystery of the late-flowering tulip in the stream border is solved. It turned out to be the lily-flowered ‘White Triumphator’ and not blowsy ‘Purissima’. Bulbs planted last autumn matched the previous ‘forgotten-the-name’ planting put in a few years ago.

Bolt of colour

Every year, I buy autumn flowering Crocus speciosus bulbs for some instant colour. Planted out somewhere sunny, in a couple of weeks the lilac chalices are up and in flower. In spring, they produce foliage, which dies away again before flowering. At least 200 corms must have been put into the garden over the years, although very few seem to flower again for me.

To get off to an earlier flowering start next year, hardy annuals, such as sweet peas, cornflowers, ammi and eschscholzia, can be sown in early October and overwintered under cover as seedlings. I am also going to try sowings of perennials and biennials this year, including aquilegia, astrantia and various foxgloves.

nElizabeth Gaskell, North and South

“The leaves were more gorgeous than ever; the first touch of frost would lay them all low to the ground. Already one or two kept constantly floating down, amber and golden in the low slanting sun-rays”

T l lHIS SPRING BULB collection will create an array of brightly coloured flowers that can either be planted among perennials or in borders and containers for a striking stand-alone display, providing long-lasting colour every year. This is an easy to grow collection and fully hardy. It includes the following bulbs: Brodiaea x 20 Dutch iris mix x 20

Muscari x 20

Puschkinia x 20

Anemone blanda x 20

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Kari-Astri Davies started gardening in her twenties with pots of roses, geraniums and sweet peas on a parapet five storeys up in central London. She’s now on her fifth garden, this time in the Wiltshire countryside. Inspiration includes her plant-mad parents, as well as Dan Pearson, Beth Chatto, Keith Wiley and the Rix & Phillips plant books. Kari describes her approach as impulsive, meaning not everything is done by the book.

Left to right: Tender sweet pea ‘Winston Churchill’ seedlings emerge; the autumn greenhouse ready to be filled with bulbs.

Puschkinia. Dutch iris mix.

Brodiaea. Anemone blanda.

Muscari.