October's Garden Update
How Do You Feel About Decay?
October has its very obvious charms, being an adjective-laden month insufficiently described as ‘autumnal’. But it seems to me that what you write about a garden in October depends in a large part upon how you feel about decay; about blown roses, frost-crisped dahlias, skeletal forms and smoky golds and russets. Of course, like most gardeners, I love it. In recent years it’s become quite vogueish to leave the garden to slope towards its demise rather than to ‘put it to bed’, and while some might find this too untidy I much prefer the romance of the former. There is so much to observe in the garden in decline – which plants become tautened versions of their living forms, and which shatter at the first frost? Which ones turn to burnished gold in the low-slung autumnal lumens as they skitter through the atmosphere?
Decay, when done right, is also a useful foil for verdant evergreens – the kind you don’t notice the rest of the year but are luminescent now, suddenly amongst the best things in the garden. I’ve heard it said that gardeners suffer from a form of myopia - eyes groundward, pockets full of objets trouvés – and October is a veritable treasure trove for those preoccupied with things that warrant a very close look. Seed heads (and seeds themselves), senescing leaves, bark, and mushrooms of all hues jostle for attention. There’s a tendency to take what you can in October, savouring the last rather than bemoaning the lack - the month where all your geese become swans.
In October we will start to gather seeds of things that have worked well in the garden this year, taking advantage of rainy days to clean and store them. The glasshouse will be closed up, opened only on sunny days, and watering will slow right down to avoid the dreaded and various winter rots. We’ll carry on gathering windfall apples, of which there are many, and the job of collecting fallen leaves begins in earnest. We have here a fairly modest leaf mould pile because I try where possible to blow or rake leaves in to borders to avoid too much handling, but this has reminded me to have a rootle around in it to see what it has made of last year’s offerings. There’s been one air frost that I know of, but we’ll keep an eye on the forecast to decide when it’s time to raze and mulch the dahlias. We’ll also continue taking cuttings of both tender and hardy plants, building stock to plant into borders in spring, by which time the mouldering remains of summer will be a distant memory, and so it goes.
Kate