Saturday 5 October 2013

Autumn

'Tis the season - in danger of falling fruit, mystical fruitiness and all that.

Plenty to eat from the plot as usual especially fruit - blackberries, raspberries, grapes, pears, tons of plums and apples.


And spiders - lots of spiders:

Late season plants for pollinators

Many of the plants for bees and butterflies which were flowering in summer are still going strong: phacelia, nepeta, nicotiana, rose campion, snapdragons and the lovely cosmos:


And these helechrysum...



...still popular with the bees...


Not forgetting the scabious:



And the Verbena bonariensis:


Some like this Anthemis tinctoria "Sauce Hollandaise" are having a second flowering:


Whilst the perrennial wallflower "Bowle's Mauve" has been flowering non-stop since early spring:




Then there are those which save their display until now. Amongst them are the asters; some of the older varieties are prone to mildew but others like "Little Carlow" are always reliable:



This A. frikartii "Monch" has been flowering since July...



...But this A. novae angliae "Barr's Pink" which I planted new this year has only just opened it's buds:



You can see where the comma gets it's name from:


Another new one which has just come out is this Eupatorium purpureum subsp "Atropurpureum", another great butterfly plant:



But the bees favourite at the moment is this Helenium "Lemon Queen":


Also in colour: