The leaves are turning, at last. The hazels around the edge of the wood are going a subdued yellow, and the field maples in the hedge stand out as splodges the colour of butter, viewed from across the lettuce field. The first cherry to change is 'Tai Haku', which is turning a soft plum red. The wild gean, which I can see from my desk, is flushing an ever darker shade of green, and there is the first hint of red in the top branches. Many cherries have superb autumn colour, a fact commonly overlooked by those garden writers who dismiss them as one season trees, since they fell out of fashion.
The birch trees turn yellow, and are doing it at different rates. One of the bottom lawn trio of river birches, Betual nigra, has already changed colour and dropped most of its leaves, while another within the same group is still mostly green. A wild seedling birch that placed itself in the spoil heap at the end of the conservatory is going a rusty brownish yellow. It has a Vitis coignetiae growing up it, which is supposed to drape the birch in huge flaming vine leaves at this time of the year, but doesn't like the spoil heap as much as the birch, and is only making rather half-hearted growth. I can see a few red leaves, but no glorious cascade. With any luck it will get its roots down and really take off one of these years. The Zelkova carpinifolia is a lovely strong yellow. I like it, and I still think the boss is wrong about zelkovas.
The Amelanchier 'Ballerina' has gone a good shade of red, probably the best it has ever achieved. I planted it partly for its autumn colour, which is supposed to be superb, but often it just goes a muddy shade of brown. 'Ballerina' has relatively large flowers, as amelanchier go, and sometimes I wonder if one of the species might have been a better choice. Something wilder and more delicate. But 'Ballerina' is a nice little tree. It was selected in the Netherlands in the 1970s, and holds the RHS Award of Garden Merit. In the front garden the Cotinus has gone a vivid deep red. I cut out the pieces that died, and am hoping that was down to the drought in spring and that the rest of it will be fine.
Up in the meadow the Liriodendron tulipifera, or tulip tree, is turning a rich, soft yellow. In the back garden I've planted a little ginkgo, which also goes a fabulous warm yellow, but little is the operative word. It isn't happy, and is growing at a snail's pace. I put it in horrid clay, hoping that as it grows well as a London street tree it might tolerate poor, heavy soil, but the ginkgo doesn't seem to see it that way.
The birds haven't yet started stripping the yellow berried Cotoneaster salicifolius 'Rothschildianus', which is putting on a splendid show. This has made a big shrub, and it responds to more than the lightest pruning by throwing up vertical water shoots, which spoil its shape. I wonder how people get on who buy them for screening in smallish gardens. Prune them so hard they don't have any shape, I suppose. The Malus 'Red Sentinel' are absolutely weighted down with fruit. I met somebody at the Braintree talk who told me about a garden pest problem I'd never heard of before, thought she looked honest and sane and I believed her. She has a 'Red Sentinel', which always used to hold on to its apples until the new year, as they do, then began to lose them in October. She couldn't work out what was taking them for quite a long time, until she saw the culprit in the act. She lives near a river, and the creature climbing her tree and eating the apples was a moorhen.
Addendum Tonight's Choral Evensong on R3 (repeated from last Wednesday) was from the chapel of Merton College, Oxford. I was christened there. A punch bowl from the Senior Common Room had to be pressed into service as an improvised font, since college chapels don't normally have one.
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