Native plants for autum colour

November 2022

OK, I’m coming out as a weed lover! 

I’m interested in something that I’ve come to term ‘natural gardening'. This, in its essence, is the use of wild plants and where possible, natural systems in the garden. Looking at the landscape as I travel through it with my garden designer's cap on, I’m keen to see what interest I can bring into the garden and just like any other garden at this time of year the changing colour of the leaves can lend great interest. 

I find it fascinating that all the colours that reveal themselves in autumn are hidden there all the time just waiting to have their brief moment before they fall. 

In the language of my schoolboy biology and greatly simplified, I think it goes something like this: the leaf's primary function is photosynthesis - capturing energy from sunlight to convert water from the soil into oxygen, and carbon dioxide from the air into sugars, producing oxygen as a byproduct. 

In order to do this the plant wants to use all the light energy from the sun that it can. This energy is held in various wavelengths and their subsequent colours, the colours of the rainbow as we see them. What we are seeing as green when we see a leaf is the reflected light from that object that has absorbed its opposite colour, In this case the tree through its chlorophyll pigments absorbs red light most efficiently. In short, the colour an object appears to be is the colour complementary to the one it most strongly absorbs.

Other pigments such as carotene and xanthophylls absorb only blue/green light and reflect an orange/yellow colour. In autumn as the process of photosynthesis slows down, and the leaves of a deciduous tree turn yellow/orange in colour, they simply lose their chlorophyll which had previously masked the other pigments. The red that we sometimes see in a leaf comes from a pigment called anthocyanin but this does not participate in photosynthesis. 

I digress…

With their yellow/orange autumn leaves, I’m confident that the wild trees, beech Fagus sylvatica, ash Fraxinus excelsior, white willow Salix alba pussy willow Salix caprea and field maple Acer campestre could find a home in most gardens, space permitting. Should we want a touch of red, sycamore Acer pseudoplatanus, wild cherry Prunus avium and bird cherry Prunus padus or hawthorn Crataegus monogyna give a good display.

Elder Sambucus nigra goes through a lovely range of pink to deep red this time of year. And for a double whammy of colour and berries, a personal favourite of mine, the spindleberry Euonymus europaeus really does come into its own in autumn. 

There are a few wild herbaceous perennials that could add some subtle colour into the garden now, amongst them bracken Pteridium aquilinum that goes through yellow and deep orange, hairy willowherb Epilobium and even dock Rumex obtusifolius turns the most remarkable colours as it goes into dormancy.

Finally, and I would imagine controversially, Bramble is not an easy plant to contend with in the garden but we all love a blackberry and what an amazing range of autumn colour.

Understandably, gardening to include plants like these many of which are considered weeds does take a slightly different outlook but there is a wealth of riches in our wild flora that I find challenging and compelling and I've always got an excuse for not having done the weeding!

Whether we want these plants in our gardens or not, they’re a pleasure to look at in the countryside at the moment.

NB, remember that it’s illegal to dig up any wild plant and always make double sure that the plant is what you think it is if you’re going to eat it.