It’s autumn, the weather begins to cool, the humidity drops and the trees begin to transform into something quite magnificent. It’s a chore raking up all those leaves, but the spectacular colours you can have, are worth it -plus they make good compost to boot!

There’s precious little I can say about the recent summer (or lack thereof) so let’s just move on and put all those soggy months behind us. Hopefully we can now just look forward to the leaves changing into those brilliant colours of autumn-and who knows, we may even get more sunshine than we’ve been used to these past few months!

March is a busy month in the garden. It’s time though to get things in order, particularly the garden beds. Some preliminary work for winter is always a good start, turn over garden beds with a bit of manure or compost and a deep water once a week to encourage strong root development.

Last month, we spoke about trees that may have been damaged over the summer. Prune away any damaged limbs or even remove some under-performing trees from your garden altogether. A tree removal can make room for something exciting and in the spirit of autumn why not something with a bit of leaf colour!

It’s autumn, the weather begins to cool, the humidity drops and the trees begin to transform into something quite magnificent. It’s a chore raking up all those leaves, but the spectacular colours you can have, are worth it -plus they make good compost to boot!

You can plant now for next autumn. Usually you might plant bare-rooted trees in winter but consider something potted and already in leaf. The benefit of this is you can actually see what the leaf colour is going to be in advance. Members of the cherry (Prunus), Nyssa, Ash (Fraxinus) or Oak (Quercus) family can give you beautiful colours but the real stars of autumn are members of the maple (Acer) and liquidambar family (Liquidambar styraciflua). With foliage that ranges from yellow to orange right up to a beautiful scarlet and even purple. Be careful though, some varieties of these deciduous trees can grow up to 20 metres high which can be unsuitable for the smaller suburban garden.