November in the Garden

... by Helen Ellison, Garden Designer

November – really? It certainly doesn’t feel like it with the unseasonably warm weather we’ve been having. This has meant all the annuals in the garden have kept on flowering their heads off, which is great. I keep looking out in the morning expecting the nasturtium leaves to be wilted in morning frost, but not yet.
What else can we see in flower in November (even under normal weather conditions)? Here’s just a few:
1. Erica darleyensis - low-growing evergreen with very fine, needle-like foliage, often with yellow orange tints and masses of white, pink or mauve flowers. Height 45-60cms. They’ll flower for several months but are best grown in acid soil




2. Hebe ‘Autumn Glory’ – an evergreen shrub suitable for the small garden, reaching only about 60-70cms tall and round. It has reddish stems, red margined green leaves and rich violet flowers summer to autumn.








3. Liriope muscari – Lilyturf – coming to the end of its season, but still a valuable source of late colour, this perennial has spikes of purple flowers above evergreen, grassy, dark green foliage. Height 20-25cms.










4. Viburnum bodnantense ‘Dawn’ - not for the small garden perhaps, this is a large erect deciduous shrub with many clusters of fragrant pink flowers in winter. Height 2-3ms. Cut some and bring it indoors.





Interest doesn’t just come from flowers however, and many plants put on good displays of berries and fruits at this time of year:

1. Callicarpa bodinieri giraldii ‘Profusion’ – a medium-sized deciduous shrub with oval mid green leaves, often bronze when young, and tiny star-shaped lilac flowers in summer followed by striking clusters of polished purple fruits in autumn and winter.








2. Gaultheria mucronata – another plant for acid soils, this is a small evergreen shrub with creamy, bell-like flowers in May and white, pink or red berries in winter.







3. Ilex – Holly - familiar to us all, a large, dense evergreen with glossy green leaves, sometime variegated, tiny cream flowers in early summer followed by red berries. Cut some branches and bring them indoors for Christmas.







4. Pyracantha - large, evergreen wall shrub with cream flowers in June and red, orange or yellow berries in winter.




5. Rosa rugosa – an easy-to-grow, old-fashioned shrub rose which is especially good for hedging. It has large, strongly scented wine-red blooms over a long season, followed by large red hips.







6. Symphoricarpus – another easy-to-grow shrub with small white or pink flowers June – August followed by large white, pink or purple berries that last for months in winter. A word of caution though, this is a rampant grower and can rapidly spread through the border, so keep in check!




Most of these provide a valuable source of food for birds, but if you don’t want the berries stripped from your plants choose the lighter coloured ones – the red ones tend to go first!


NOVEMBER TIPS AND ADVICE

1. As the last of the leaves fall from the trees, have a good tidy up and clear them all away from the borders and from the lawn. Put them on the compost heap, if you’ve got one. If not you can bag them up in black sacks with a few holes in them – they’ll rot down over winter to produce a good leafy mulch for next year.
2. Give the lawn its final cut, but not if it’s frosty or wet.
3. If you live in a mild area you can prune your roses now (leave it until March if you don’t). Cut the stems back to an outward facing bud with a slanting cut so that rain doesn’t sit on the top, causing it to rot. Don’t worry too much about technique though, as roses are surprisingly tolerant.
4. If you have ordered bare-rooted roses, they’ll be arriving shortly - get them unpacked and planted in well-prepared ground as soon as you can so that they don’t dry out.
5. It’s not too late to plant deciduous trees, shrubs and climbers as the soil’s still warm enough for them to make some new root growth before winter, but evergreens should wait until spring. Bare-rooted trees and shrubs are particularly good value.
6. This is the latest month to plant Tulips.
7. Move any tender plants you have in pots, such as Bananas, Tree Ferns, Cannas, Colocasias and Agapanthus, into the greenhouse to protect them from frost.
8. If your tender plants are growing in the ground, and you live in a milder area, you can protect them with straw in the crowns, or in the case of bananas, with tall terracotta chimney pots or drainpipes stuffed with straw.
9. Alternatively, when we do get the first frosts, you can lift Dahlia, Colocasia and Canna tubers, remove the foliage to within 5-8cms of the tuber and dry out, removing any parts that look as though they may have rotted. Store in boxes of dry bark chippings, crowns exposed, in a cool, dry, frost-free place.
10. If you’ve got a water feature it’s advisable, though not essential, to remove submersible pumps for the winter. Clean them and store in a dry place. If you leave them in though, just run the pump every week or so during the winter.