Autumn Tasks for the Garden: Insights from Sissinghurst's Head Gardener on the August Garden Chores
Autumn Gardening at Sissinghurst Castle Garden
Sissinghurst Castle Garden in Kent, England, is a horticultural haven that comes alive with a flurry of activity as autumn approaches. The garden's team of horticultural experts is busy preparing for the coming seasons, focusing on maintaining structure, encouraging growth, and preserving plants for next year.
Hedge Cutting
Early autumn is the perfect time to trim hedges lightly. This tidies the appearance and encourages healthy growth, avoiding major cuts late in the season that might stimulate tender new growth vulnerable to frost.
Lawn Care
Autumn jobs include raking leaves to prevent smothering, aerating to improve soil and root health, overseeding bare patches, and applying autumn lawn feed to strengthen grass before winter. Pre-germinating the grass seed by mixing it with top dressing a week or so before broadcasting ensures that the lawn greens up more quickly.
Sowing Yellow Rattle
Yellow rattle, a semi-parasitic wildflower, is typically sown in autumn into grassland or meadow areas to help reduce vigorous grass growth and encourage wildflowers the next year. At Sissinghurst, Rhinanthus minor is being sown to weaken the grass sward as part of this enrichment plan.
Planting Biennials and Hardy Annuals
Autumn is the ideal time for planting biennials such as wallflowers and sweet williams, allowing them to establish roots over winter and flower the next spring or summer. Hardy annual seeds can be sown in autumn to overwinter and establish early growth, resulting in earlier and more robust flowering in spring.
Seed Collecting and Cleaning
Collect mature seeds from perennials, annuals, and biennials once dry, then clean and store them properly for sowing next season. This promotes conservation of heritage plants and cost-effective propagation.
Shared Planting Experiments
Simple bulbs are favored for their appearance in 'wilder' areas, with narcissi, fritillaries, and crocuses being common choices. Plug-grown plants, such as primulas or cardamines, are being planted alongside bulbs in shared planting experiments.
Meadow Enrichment
The garden's meadow areas have seen an increase in wildflower species and pollinators due to enrichment efforts. Hardy annuals are being sown later in the year, including Ammi, Nigella, Centaurea, Atriplex, Orlaya, Cosmos, and white poppies, from September to October.
The Rondel
The Rondel, a circular yew hedge in the Rose Garden at Sissinghurst, is part of the living architecture that forms the bones of the garden. It was planted by Harold as a solution to disguise the irregularity of the Rose Garden and acts as a pivot between two primary vistas. The Rondel's sides are always cut before the top, and from the bottom up.
Autumn Colours
As the season changes to autumn, the garden's colours shift. From the low smoulder of sedums in hues of faded Venetian red to the burning torch of Euonymus alatus, the garden offers a breathtaking spectacle of autumnal hues.
Practical Tips
Troy Scott Smith advises against watering the borders at Sissinghurst. Pigeons do not seem to be interested in eating the germinated seed. A hollow roller with a mesh skin is used to evenly distribute the top dressing and seed mix over the lawn.
These practices reflect the seasonal horticultural philosophy at Sissinghurst to maintain garden structure, promote biodiversity, and extend seasonal interest, as highlighted in talks and garden notes from the estate's horticultural experts. Although exact step-by-step guides specific to Sissinghurst are limited in the search results, these recommended tasks align closely with standard autumn garden management principles applied there and other long-established English gardens.
- In the gardens of Sissinghurst Castle, late autumn is a time for sowing yellow rattle into grassland or meadow areas to help reduce grass growth and encourage wildflowers next year.
- The home-and-garden lifestyle at Sissinghurst Castle Garden includes the practice of planting biennials such as wallflowers and sweet williams in the autumn to allow them to establish roots over winter and flower the following spring or summer.
- For flower lovers and aspiring gardeners, studying the gardening techniques at Sissinghurst Castle Garden, such as the sowing of Ammi, Nigella, Centaurea, Atriplex, Orlaya, Cosmos, and white poppies in meadow areas from September to October, can offer valuable insights into extending seasonal interest and promoting biodiversity.
