If I had to fill in an end-of-term report card for my garden, I'm afraid that for the subject Autumn-Flowering Plants I'd have to write: "Could do better". Looking around the late-September scene, I find rather too much of the tall Japanese anemone, `Honorine Jobert'. It is a beautiful plant: the white flowers are crowned by a golden boss of stamens, and are held proudly above the foliage. It never needs staking, is virtually immune to pest or disease, and increases enthusiastically.
It is the lazy gardener's dream come true. Before you know it, it has taken over the place, muscling aside more-timid plants with its ground covering, evergreen leaves. I suppose you could call it a bully, yet without it - and its ruddy-faced relatives `Hadspen Abundance' and `Prinz Heinrich' - many autumn gardens would be flower-free zones.
But a plantation of wiry-stemmed anemones and a few summer stragglers is not enough to keep the spirits up as the nights lengthen. With this in mind, I embarked on an informal crash-course in autumn flowers, with three experts in late bloomers. My tutors were Assumpta Broomfield, of Irish Country Garden Plants near Portlaoise, who has co-created a magnificent border at Altamont in Co Carlow; Paul Cox, who runs the Hardy Plant Nursery in Ballybrack, Co Dublin (while looking after an excellent all-seasons Dublin garden); and Rosamund Henley, who has recently set up her own nursery at Annes Grove Plants in Co Cork, where she also manages the autumn border.
"You should think about autumn in the spring," instructs Rosamund - which is all very well, but in truth, few of us do. However, next spring, we can plant chrysanthemums for October colour: the pinkish `Emperor of China', `Anne, Lady Brocket' ("apricot at first, and then she fades as she opens,") and deep-red `Herbstrubin'. And in late summer we can plant autumn bulbs "for a nice surprise": the yellow-flowered Sternbergia lutea, the candy-coloured nerines and Amaryllis belladonna. All enjoy a well-drained, but moist, soil in a sunny position.
Colchicums - also known tantalisingly as naked ladies, naked boys, naked men, naked nannies and various other nude people - can be found in flower at many outlets, including the Hardy Plant Nursery. The luscious blooms are like cartoon crocuses: big, fleshy and improbable. Put them where their leaves, which appear after the flowers, will not interfere with more delicate plants.
Also at Hardy Plants is a selection of asters or Michaelmas daisies, a plant that defines autumn for many gardeners (Victorians used to devote whole borders to them). Paul Cox especially likes the stately blue-flowered, two-metre-high, blackstemmed `Calliope': "Give it space, and grow it where you can see the stems. From a distance it could fool you into thinking it was a bamboo." Assumpta Broomfield recommends `Little Carlow': "covered in beautiful blue flowers and resistant to mildew", the scourge of asters, especially those of the novi-belgii kind. Rosamund Henley, meanwhile, says that Aster amellus cultivars are less prone to the powdery fungus.
The blue and purple end of the spectrum offers many other autumn performers, such as the late-flowering monkshood, Aconitum carmic haelii, the shrubby Ceratostigma willmottianum and its more squat relation, C. plumbaginoides. From northern India comes Strobilanthes atropurpureus with bent-over, purple, tubular bells - like Dickensian hearing-trumpets.
And "if you sow only one annual," enjoins Assumpta Broomfield, "make it Nicandra physalodes." The apple of Peru, or shoo-fly (it is supposed to deter whitefly) has white-throated, blue flowers that metamorphose into brown berries encased within parchment lanterns. Assumpta suggests teaming blues with yellows, including the pendulous, scented Clematis rehderiana from China (which grows to about three metres) and the elegant Japanese Kirengeshoma palmata, a perennial with pale, silky blooms and dark stems. Brasher yellows are embodied in golden rods (Solidago) - not recommended for hay-fever-sufferers - and the lanky, daisy-flowered, back-of-border specimens such as Rudbeckia `Herbstsonne' (a martyr to slugs in my garden) and Helianthus `Gullick's Variety'.
Every autumn garden needs a bit of froth to lighten the darkening skies. Assumpta advises planting Cimicifuga simplex with its long racemes of tiny white flowers, while Paul proffers white mugwort (Artemisia lactiflora) with its creamy lace-work borne airily on pale-green stems. And for horizontal plates of pink or red froth, there are the succulent-leaved, large stonecrops such as Sedum `Herbstfreude' (also known as `Autumn Joy'), S. spectabile `Brilliant' and S. telephium `Matrona'.
After this intense lesson in late flowers, I'm determined to pull my garden's socks up, so that next autumn it won't be slouching along at the back of the class.
Annes Grove Plants, Castletownroche, Co Cork. Open from March 17th to September 30th, Monday to Saturday: 10 a.m.-5 .p.m; Sunday: 1-6 p.m. Other times by appointment. Telephone: 022-26811 and 0868291467.
Hardy Plant Nursery, Ridge House, Ballybrack, Co Dublin. Open 9.30 a.m.5 p.m. Wednesday to Saturday until October 28th. Other times by appointment. Plants also by mail order. Telephone: 012826973. E-mail: hardyplant@hotmail.com
Irish Country Garden Plants: Telephone 0502-55343 for details.
Jane Powers can be contacted at: jpowers@irish-times.ie