Top September Plants
Yellow is one colour of September: Helianthus, Rudbeckia, and Heliopsis; the other is a dusky pink, found in many sedums.
Best Garden Room
The Top Lawn hangs on into autumn with dazzling Mexican Salvias battling for attention with slow-burn Sedum Matrona and the lanky purple brushes of Vernonia.
Ten plants that will extand your season into autumn.
Pensthorpe started life as a wildfowl wetland but had the wisdom to ask Piet Oudolf to create its Milennium prairie planted garden in 2000.
September is a surprisingly colourful month with late-flowering plants floating above wind-tousled grasses
Top September plants
Harvest
The greenhouse is full of chillies, tomatoes and aubergenes. Rampant squash tentacles and extravagant courgette leaves roam between tomato cordons, corn and leeks. The last of the pest-proof Desiree potatoes have just been harvested. September's a time of roasted tomato soups, salads, ratatouille and crumbles.
Top plants – when they flower – what they bring to the garden
| 1. Helianthus Lemon Qu. | Sept-Oct | Tall with pale-lemon sunflowers |
| 2. Sedum ‘Vera Jameson’ | Sept-Oct | A purple and pink scrambler |
| 3. Aster King George | Sept-Oct | Amethyst daisy with yellow centres |
| 4. Salvia Amistad | June-Oct | The plant that nailed ‘purple’ |
| 5. Abutilon Megapot’cum | June-Oct | Disney-esque crimson cardinal hats |
| 6. Mex. Salvia Watermelon | May-Oct | Eye-searing magenta-pink |
| 7. Japanese Anenome | Sept | Proud white swirls with a yellow eye |
| 8. Rudbeckia Ful. Deamii | July-Oct | The pick of autumn’s yellow daisies |
| 9. Sedum Iceberg | Aug-Sept | A landscape of creamy-white |
| 10. Pyracantha | All year | Drenched in vermilion berries |
And more...
| Salvia Black and Blue |
| Geranium Ann Folkard |
| Agastache Apollo |
| Crocosmia Star of the East |
| Vernonia Baldwinii |
| Eupatorium Purpureum |
| Miscanthus Morning-light |
| Autumn Crocus |
| Agastache Black Adder |
| Sedum Matrona |
| Society Garlic |
The Top Lawn
The Top Lawn has many early flowering shrubs, then Iris and Alliums in May, but come September it’s a favourite place, both for us and the insects. Sedum Matrona, the Eupatorium (hemp) and Asters all attract bees and butterflies, while the sprawling Mexican Salvias are regularly investigated by fascinating hummingbird hawk moths at this time of year.
Garden Rooms in September
Pensthorpe
Piet Oudolf’s Milennium prairie-planted garden is at the Pensthorpe Natural Park. It added a garden dimension to the park’s Norfolk landscape of lake, reeds and wildfowl.
It introduced us to a host of plants that have since found their way into our garden and it continues to evolve and delight.
We’ve already collected the Persicarias, Sedums, Hemps, Echinacea and Phlomis Amazone. The glorious grasses are being tracked down as I design this page. Which brings us to…
Wild spectacle: Reeds and grasses
The picture (below) is a bit of a cheat but it was too grassy not to use. This is one spectacle where the sound and movement are more important than the picture anyway.
