It’s officially autumn now and the garden is just beginning to slip it’s golden coat on.
Our days are shorter and much cooler now and it’s dark when we get up in the morning!
It’s windy and huge rafts of grey clouds have been pelting rain at anything in their path.
We know what’s coming but it’s still a shock after the mild months of summer.
Imagine if you had to live outside in this cold and windy weather, under a hedge or in a tree. What would make it more bearable? A good supply of juicy fruit would do for starters.
We have some mixed hedging around our garden with Hawthorn as the dominant plant. Crataegus monogyna is brilliant for wildlife and the thorns prevent the hedge being eaten by livestock in neighbouring fields. I took these photos last night between 6pm and 7pm just before the sun set. These are the plants that stood out to me as looking good right at this moment.
Blackberries have made themselves at home here. We didn’t plant them but they seem to have found a niche sending their strong arching shoots way up through the Hawthorn hedge. There seems to be two different types. One with pink buds and flowers and one with white buds and flowers. Both Rubus fruticosus, the blackberries have been producing flowers and fruit since early August and as you can see they are still going strong with plenty of flowers to bloom and fruit to ripen.
There are wild roses… this is the field rose is Rosa arvensis and plenty of common ivy too. Hedera helix has these unusual globe like flowers followed by black fruit later on. The wild roses have large fat red hips in clusters through out autumn.
There are a few large Elder shrubs dotted in amongst the Hawthorn. You wouldn’t look twice at this plant earlier in the year, it’s plain green and insignificant. It comes into it’s own when it flowers and right now Sambucus nigra is looking good with generous clusters of glossy black berries hanging from maroon red stalks.
All of these plants produce their fruit throughout autumn. The hedgerow is like a buffet for our wild creatures.
The very last fruits to remain in the hedge are the white Snowberries of Symphoricarpos albus. Perhaps they aren’t quite as tasty as the red and black fruit, or perhaps they become edible later on in the season. The birds just don’t seem to care for them until everything else has gone.
It was good to take a close look at some of the plants in our hedge. They are quite common so nothing special you may say but when you take a close look at the detail they are all really quite beautiful. What’s Looking Good in your garden this week?
Welcome to Looking Good
This is week 1 of my Friday Blogging event. We would love to see what’s looking good in your garden or neighbourhood.
How to Add your Post:
- Write your post as normal and please include a link to this post.
- Click the Frog to add your Url/web address for your post and link your post.
- Please leave a comment here.
- To welcome other time zones the link remains open until 12 noon (London) on Saturday
Thanks very much for joining in with my first Looking Good!
Beautiful pictures. I love the color palette you chose to feature in this blog.
Thanks very much Christine. The colours are a result of what’s in the hedge today. It’s all black/white and red at the moment but that will soon change soon with seeds and nuts ripening… we should see more browns and golds then too. It’s all starting to become softer and much more mellow around here.
Definitely looking good! Especially if I was a bird! 🙂
Thanks Eliza
Congratulations on your first ‘looking good’ post! I love the link process–wow, so cool. Beautiful photos. Very interesting about the white berries–there are some native berrying plants here and they’re also white, though I think the birds snatch them right along with the others. And the blackberries. Ours ripen in May and are long gone. I know that in Oregon (Pacific Northwest) blackberries are considered invasive. Are they in the UK? Thanks for hosting!
Thanks for linking Tina. I hoped that it would be really easy to link up… and it is. Woo Hoo!
Beautiful photos, especially the blackberries.
Thanks very much Debz.
Congratulations, a lovely launch to the ‘looking good’ series. The idea of a buffet of berries is delightful and well observed both in words and images. Thank you.
Thanks Kate. Are you posting a link? I would love it if you could.
Sorry, not for the next week or so … When the garden ‘closes’ I hope I’ll have a bit more time. 😊
That’s lovely. Looking forward to seeing your garden.
Wonderful post, and there are so many good things about Autumn and harvest time, Lovely to connect with your blog Gillian, and a fabulous collection of photo’s And the Blackberries have been in abundance in our garden this year also.
Happy gardening to you
Sue 🙂
Thanks very much for visiting and following Sue. Please pop back again soon! Have a lovely weekend. 🙂
Hi Gillian, Your hedge looks wonderful – great Autumn images.
It’s amazing how the fruit production is staggered isn’t it? We haven’t had the white Symphoricarpos berries for a couple of years now as Gadget Man has neatly trimmed it in summer cutting off all the developing fruit. I am awarding him a Gold Star this year for being restrained. Already I can see his fingers twitching and itching to get the hedge cutters out. Thanks for joining in. I knew you would have something lovely to show us all.
Your montages are great colour combinations and you’ve got a lovely crop of blackberries to pick. I don’t know why, but I really dislike snowberries, so please don’t make them look attractive!
Sorry for including Snowberries Allison! I do think they are attractive, quite a plain hedge all summer and then pretty autumn leaves and perfect berries. Thanks very much for joining in with Looking Good this Friday. I appreciate you taking the time to let bloggers see your fantastic garden and ginormous Persicaria!
Unfortunately your Snowberries do look pretty. Grrrr. BTW the border shots in the last two photos are sadly not my garden, but the NT walled garden at Wimpole Hall.
Your posts and pictures as usual are fantastic. I added my little picture to your link. Hope it worked out ok. Loving this idea. Great seeing everyone’s photos. Some lovely ideas to go on a lust list for my garden in the future. Off to google snowberries now….
Thanks for joining in with Looking Good. I love your bright pink Dahlias and your butterflies.
Thanks very much for joining in with my first blogging event.
Oh. These are lovely images. Thanks so much for posting them!
Thanks very much for visiting and commenting Debra. Nature is amazing isn’t it? The next Looking Good link up is this Friday 2nd October. I would love it if you could join in so that my readers can see some of your beautiful pictures. Here’s the post explaining how it works. http://countrygardenuk.com/2015/09/22/looking-good-in-the-garden/
Thank you for the kind comment on my grandbaby’s post. He was long awaited and a surprise so we are thrilled.. Your website is wonderful. The layout is friendly and so well organized. It really is well done. I have been blogging since 2007 and could only hope to have something this nice. Of course I only started gardening five years ago with the intent of helping wildlife in my western NY state yard.. Michelle
Thank you so much for visiting and for such a lovely comment Michelle. I have been gardening a long time but blogging for just a couple of years. This is the third WordPress theme I’ve had for this blog. I started with Twenty Eleven, then moved on to Twenty Fourteen and I’ve just changed to Goran because I wanted it to be more like a website and very user friendly. Wildlife is a big factor in our garden too… although we don’t have the range of species that you have!
Congrats on your first group post, I wasn’t able to join in last week will try for this week. 🙂
I would love it if you could join in. The more the merrier I think and we would all love to see what’s happening in your garden/neighbourhood. Will post the link at midnight on Thursday and it runs until midday on Saturday. (British Summer Time)
i am not much of a gardener but I have been loving following these links and reading all these posts. I feel like I’ve had a lovely afternoon wandering through gardens! Thank you!
Thanks for visiting and commenting too. You are most welcome… gardener or not. We are doing it all again on Friday 2nd October. If you’d like to join in with a picture from your garden or neighbourhood that would be fantastic or you could just pop in to see what we’re up to.
I have to be out of town, but maybe next time! 🙂
Hello Gillian. I followed the trail from Eliza’s lovely garden to find you here. It seems that I’m too late to join in this week, but my garden is looking rather good right now, so I may just join in next week. 🙂
You have a beautiful range of plants in your garden, just lovely. 🙂
Thanks for visiting and for your kind comments Joanne. You are most welcome to pop back whenever you like and join in with the Looking Good Friday event too.