HOW very important it is to have things to which we can look forward stretching the garden into the shorter, darker days.
It would be easy on a cold and wet October day to abandon the scene and to content oneself with an occasional glimpse from the window of the flaming foliage of the Stag's Horn sumach Rhus typhina. If you do not grow it in your own garden, surely someone else does nearby. The neatly-rounded canopy of leaves blazes in orange, russet and red for a few weeks before the branches are stripped bare. On the positive side, it always obliges and an eye-catching show can be generated for two weeks or so every year. Easy to cultivate, the sumach will try to please by forming a suckering colony of young trees in its vicinity. Many of us find such familiarity too trying and so will not sacrifice space for a small tree which we can so conveniently enjoy at a safe distance in a neighbour's garden, and my recommendation is to leave it there unless you possess broad acres. Then, a grove of the sumach by the edge of your lake will be ever so nice.
A neglected and often forgotten autumn plant is the Chinese Lantern. Modern gardens do not seem to have it and I dismissed it once myself quite rashly as an obsolete relic of the past. Older gardens always seemed to sport it and being a survivor it hung on when more delicate. plants disappeared.
It is herbaceous and the name Chinese Lantern is certainly easier than Physalis alkekengii. There is a somewhat better one from Japan, Physalis franhetti `Gigantea'. Either one I now welcome. They grow to about two feet in height and are not particular as to position, seeming equally happy in sun or shade. In a prominent place this could become an annoying nuisance in summer, sitting like a potato in foliage and flower. The two are related.
The Chinese Lantern flowers all summer and autumn - creamy stars which are not very special or eye-catching. In September and October, the ripe fruit is held concealed within hanging lantern-like calyces of a brilliant orange which look most attractive set against the green leaves.
Autumn has a surfeit of yellow brassy daisies and orange shades so the charm of this plant may not be at first apparent. It is so easy and can brighten up a neglected corner with its warm glow, and then the thing is useful for drying too if one is interested in flower-arranging. Planted in the best place it will run about and become too much of a summer bore so give it a second - or even third - class seat.
The berries held within the delightful lantern are edible and the plant is related to the Cape Gooseberry.
A tall white daisy which has an air of cool sophistication and freshness as many flowers are fading and decaying is Leucanthemells serotina. Its name is new to most of us and gardeners have known it for years as Chrysanthemum uliginosum. The taxonomists have been busy again trying to catch us out with name changes. Their function seems to be to make life difficult for us.
The daisy grows to five or six feet but is in no way ungainly and in my experience never needs, staking. It comes from Hungary and was just the thing to give the whole chrysanthemum family a good name before it was discovered. The daisy flowers are large and held in sprays, each flower with a greenish-yellow eye and they perform from September right through October. This plant is most welcome in bringing some refinement which we need to ease the coarseness of the declining garden. A word of warning: the flowers turn to face the sun so if they are planted in the wrong position the gardener may be obliged to look only at their backs. This will be happy in all but the driest and lightest garden soils.
AN American visitor which has been adding a somewhat similar note of pleasing freshness to borders since September is Boltonia. Because it flowers late in the garden year, it has been ignored for a long time and in cooler gardens this is understandable. In warmer places, it gives a really good account with small starry daisy flowers in great clouds, almost like a giant gypsophila.
It comes in white and in pale lilac and can grow up to six or seven feet high. This will not be for every garden but where there is a bit of room and for gardeners who would like to extend the season with something nicer than another perennial sunflower of sorts, the Boltonia in one form or another could be just the thing.