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.
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?
This is week 1 of my Friday Blogging event. We would love to see what’s looking good in your garden or neighbourhood.
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