It is now October and the change of mood from the flamboyance of summer to the mellow days of autumn brings a shift of gear in the garden. The symphony of colours, from the low smoulder of sedums in hues of faded Venetian red to the burning torch of Euonymus alatus, reminds us that time is short. The first frosts of the season will induce a sudden surge of senescence, making the soil cold and wet.
Here are the autumn gardening jobs we do this season, with tips and tricks on the best way to do them, which can also be used as a guide for what to do in your own space.
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Autumn gardening jobs
Hedge cutting
The Rondel is what Vita and Harold called the circular yew hedge they planted, in what would become the Rose Garden. The name Rondel and the proportion of the circle references the oast houses (built for drying hops) typical of this area. The planting of the Rondel was Harold’s elegant solution to disguise the irregularity of the Rose Garden and acts as a pivot between two primary vistas. In addition, it is a welcome decompression chamber from the exuberance of Vita’s planting.
The Rondel, in common with all our hedges at Sissinghurst, is part of the living architecture that forms the bones of the garden. The weighty stillness of the hedges provides the anchor point for the more ephemeral garden elements, and as such the annual clipping can’t come soon enough – it injects a solidity and calmness to the scene, a sense of order in the otherwise lush planting.
Both sides of the hedge are always cut before the top, and from the bottom up. When it comes to the top of the hedge, you have two choices – to cut level with the land or to cut using a spirit level. With very sloping ground it is best to cut with the slope, whereas using a spirit level is most effective in more formal situations and where there are no great differences in the lie of the land.
Here's how to cut your hedge
Lawn care
Work on grass areas is essential in autumn to relieve compaction and repair worn or bare areas. We remove the build-up of thatch (dead grass that lies in the sward) using a scarifier (on a smaller scale, a metal-tined rake does just as well). We then improve surface aeration and drainage using a mechanical spiker fitted with hollow tines, which pulls out and collects cores of soil. We fill the resulting holes by brushing in a top dressing of sharp sand or old potting compost. On bare areas, we mix grass seed in with top dressing to oversow. We use a hollow roller with a mesh skin that evenly distributes the top dressing and seed mix over the lawn. One trick I’ve learned is to pre-germinate the grass seed by mixing it with the top dressing a week or so before broadcasting. This ensures that the lawn greens up more quickly, and fortunately the pigeons don’t seem to be interested in eating the germinated seed.
Here's simple ways of looking after your lawn
Sowing yellow rattle
For several years we’ve worked to a plan of meadow enrichment. It’s starting to show rewards, with a significant increase in the wildflower species we’re seeing and a subsequent uplift in pollinators and other insects. One part of this is the weakening of the grass sward by growing the semi-parasitic annual yellow rattle, Rhinanthus minor. Sowing now into scratched patches of lawn or meadow should result in germination next spring and flowering in May and June, with real-time weakening, and successive self-sowing continuing the process.
Planting biennials
Biennials are ready to move into their flowering position in the garden around mid-October to late November. We grow a range, including wallflowers, sweet Williams, foxgloves, Verbascum and some more unusual ones, such as Campanula patula and Michauxia campanuloides.
Growing hardy annuals
Traditionally, hardy annuals are sown in early spring, but we are sowing an increasing number, such as Ammi, Nigella, Centaurea, Atriplex, Orlaya, Cosmos and our special white poppy (grown from our own seed since Vita’s time) in September and October. Not only will these late-summer sowings provide earlier-flowering and larger plants, but it is another way in which we are adapting our gardening to a changing climate. Autumn-sown plants are planted out in early February and by flowering time in April and May they are well established and more able to cope with periods of drought than the spring-sown annuals.
Seed collecting and cleaning
At monthly intervals from midsummer until the new year, we scour the garden for ripe seed. With some practice, just the right moment of ripeness can be judged. Too early and your sowings are sure to fail, too late and the hungry birds will have their fill. Plants have adapted very successful mechanisms for seed dispersal, so you need to get in there first. We carefully cut selected flowerheads, placing them upside down in a brown paper bag. These are labelled and put in a warm, dry place; we put ours on the greenhouse staging, where there is good air movement.
After a week or so, when the collected flowerheads are thoroughly dry, the next stage is to clean them ready for storing and later sowing.
Planting bulbs in meadow grass
Each year I like to add a few bulbs to the Orchard and meadow areas to top up any losses or shy flowerers. In these ‘wilder’ areas, I choose bulbs for their simplicity, favouring the species or those that look similar. My go-to narcissi are the early flowering native Narcissus pseudonarcissus and the late-flowering Narcissus poeticus ‘Recurvus’, which is wonderfully scented, too. I am experimenting with ‘shared’ planting, with what appears to be good results. I make a hole by removing a core of soil using a bulb planter, and into the same hole I plant three bulbs at varying depths – for example, narcissi, fritillaries and crocuses – topped with a small plug-grown plant such as a primula or cardamine.
Here's more from Troy Scott Smith on not watering the borders at Sissinghurst
