My best autumn trees for small gardens

Autumn trees are the stars in my November garden.

If I didn’t have trees, there would be very little to look at.  And trees improve air quality and support wildlife. Their height gives a smaller garden presence and proportion.

So I thought I’d round up my favourite autumn trees, in order to help you choose.

Maples, of course, are autumn’s prima ballerinas, but they do not do well in my garden. So here are the alternatives:

Cotinus coggyria ‘Grace’

This is more often grown as a shrub but is outstanding in both summer and in the autumn. ‘Grace’ is less well known than ‘Royal Purple’, and it’s larger, but still reasonably small for a tree. (note: links to Amazon are affiliate, which means I may get a small fee if you buy through them, but it won’t affect the price you pay.)

The star of the show this November has been Cotinus coggyria ‘Grace’, one of the larger cotinus varieties. Most people grow cotinus as a shrub, but this has grown to over 20ft high and is stunning both in the summer and autumn.

Another view of the Cotinus ‘Grace’. The white bark is from a silver birch.

Crab apple trees

I think this crab apple is Malus ‘Gorgeous’. It holds its fruits well throughout the winter.

Crab apple trees are usually compact (but not always – do check!). They offer pretty blossom in spring and fruit in autumn and winter. When choosing a crab apple, look for one that ‘holds its fruit well.’ This crab apple of mine still has fruit in February so it looks beautiful in frost.

Malus ‘Gorgeous’ holds its fruit well – I think that’s my variety, but I’ve also seen it looking good in other gardens.

This photo was taken at the end of January or beginning of February so this tree has really earned its place in my garden.

Heritage fruit trees

There’s something very satisfying about helping to keep a species from dying out. Although quince, which is my next recommendation, is fast becoming fashionable. It has beautiful white blossom in spring, and then fragrant fruits in autumn. They look like a cross between a pear and an apple.

Quince fruits in November. I’m fairly sure that this is ‘Vranja’…

Even if you can’t face wrangling the fruits to make ‘quince cheese’ or membrillo, a bowl of quince will perfume a room for several weeks.

Shaping this tree has been a bit of a struggle, but I love it now. I think it’s worth checking a young tree for shape when you choose it.

Other heritage fruit trees include damson and medlar. We did have a damson, but it didn’t do well and wasn’t a particularly good shape. It’s from the plum family and they can be very fussy.

Silver birch

We have several silver birch (‘Jacquemontii’) in the garden. They do grow quite tall but they are wonderful trees because their pale bark is a focus point, especially in autumn and winter.

The silver birch you can see has just dropped all its golden leaves. Personally I find fallen leaves very beautiful, but I suppose I will have to get them off the lawn somehow.

Silver birches work well in smaller gardens because they can be pruned to be airy and light. Their roots are not very invasive. Multi-stemmed silver birches are currently beloved of Chelsea Flower Show garden designers, and they are also likely to be less tall.

Just a beautiful tree. The Cotinus is in the background and the yellow leaf underneath is Cornus ‘Midwinter Fire’. Soon the cornus will be bare, showing off its bright orange stems. It grows very happily under the silver birch.

I wash my silver birches. (See how in the video). Since I started doing this I have had a lot of compliments – people really do say ‘what silver birch is that – it’s wonderfully white.’ When I say I wash them, they fall apart laughing.

Silver birches may seem large for smaller gardens, but there is a garden near me that is around 45ft long and wide. It has three beautiful mature silver birches at the end. The lightness of the bark stops them being oppressive.

So what’s your favourite small (ish) tree for autumn colour?

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Are you embarrassed by your Latin plant names skills?

Do you avoid using Latin names for plants? Do they seem too complicated or even unnecessary?

After all, we can all have beautiful gardens without knowing the Latin names of our plants. So I try to pretend I don’t know the proper plant names. And I also try to pretend that this is OK.

I’ve just been sent a children’s book called Perfectly Peculiar Plants by Dr Chris Thorogood (Quarto £12.99) of the Oxford Botanic Gardens. And the plants in it have their Latin names.

Dr Chris Thorogood and Perfectly Peculiar Plants at the Oxford Botanic Gardens.

If children can manage Latin plant names, I thought it was time we amateur gardeners got a grip of them. So I went to the Oxford Botanic Gardens to ask Dr Chris Thorogood to explain them.

(note: links to Amazon are affiliate, which means you can click to buy and I may get a small fee, but it doesn’t affect the price you pay. Other links are not affiliate.)

What are Latin names for plants?

Firstly, they aren’t necessarily Latin names, says Chris. ‘Some of them are Greek. Strictly speaking they’re called the ‘scientific names’ of plants.’

In this post, I’m (mostly) sticking to the phrase ‘Latin plant names’ because it seems to be the phrase that most of us use.

Chris says he included the scientific plant names as well as the common ones in his book because it would help children become familiar with the fact that such names exist.

This is the Tank Bromeliad or Aechmea zebrina. Other Bromeliacaea include pineapples and air plants.

‘Up to 1 in 5 plants worldwide is at risk of extinction, so it’s essential to enthuse the next generation of botanists. When people think of conservation, they commonly think of pandas and tigers – I want to show children that plants are just as extraordinary.’ Understanding the names of plants is part of that.

Why do we need Latin plant names

Before Karl Linnaeus devised the current plant naming system, plants were given lots of different names across different languages and culture.

‘We use plants for medicines, food and horticulture, so it’s important that we know what plant we’re talking about in order to use it and grow it consistently,’ says Chris. ‘It helps to make sense of the seemingly chaotic diversity of living things.’

For example, ‘Michaelmas daisy’ is the common name for a number of different and entirely unrelated flowering plants. We used to call them ‘asters’, but botanists discovered that although they looked alike, many weren’t related genetically at all.

The top flower is Aster mellus ‘King George’. For many years, the pink flower beneath (Symphyotricum novi-belgii Heinz Richard)was also considered to be an ‘aster’ but DNA testing has shown that it is no relation. Yet the common name of both is ‘Michaelmas daisy.’

This doesn’t matter if all you want is a beautiful plant in your garden, but it would be critical if you discovered a medicinal or food use for Michaelmas daisies.

For example, begonias…

I became interested in Latin plant names when I interviewed plant-lovers in their own gardens. Philip Oostenbrink, Head gardener of Canterbury Cathedral and Dan Cooper, blogger at The Frustrated Gardener. When I asked what a plant was, I often got the answer ‘Begonia luxurians‘ or ‘Begonia Martin Johnson…..’

Begonia ‘Martin Johnson’ in Dan Cooper’s study. It’s the plant with the blue and purple leaves and jagged tips.

Begonia sutherlandii on my mantelpiece….you wouldn’t initially think that both my and Dan Cooper’s begonias were related….

None of these begonias looked like the begonias I’ve seen for sale in garden centres or used in pot displays. How big is the begonia family, I wondered? It reminds me of a friend of mine who has 45 first cousins. When there’s a wedding her side of the church is entirely taken up by relations.

My begonias from Great Dixter: Begonia ‘Burle Marx’,’Garden Angel Blush’, Begonia carolineifolia, Begonia sutherlandii, Begonia scharffii, Begonia luxurians

So I bought six begonias at the Great Dixter Plant Fair. They all look very different from each other, and some are very different from pot begonias. But they are all related. And they have lots more cousins….

Now that’s what I call a begonia. Begonias(unknown varieties) seen in a pot display this summer.

How Latin plant names work

Back to the Oxford Botanic Gardens… Chris explains that Karl Linnaeus devised a system known as ‘binomial nomenclature’. That translates as ‘two names’.

‘The first name is the generic name of the plant. For example, a banana palm is Musa. And the second name is the specific branch of it,’ says Chris. ‘So I’m standing next to a Musa ornata or Ornamental Banana Palm. These are written in italic.’

You would definitely want to know that you were buying pineapples, airplants or tank bromeliads….especially if you were shopping for supper….Bromeliads are another big plant family.

Then there are further varieties, often cross-bred deliberately to create better yields of vegetable or more beautiful garden plants. These names come after the generic and specific names, and are called ‘cultivar’ or variety. For example, I have an Aster mellus ‘King George’.

So it’s like our system of identifying people by using first names and family names, only in reverse. I suggested to Chris that if he were a plant, he might be called ‘Thorogood Chris Dr.’ Or written: ‘Thorogood Chris ‘Dr”.

How to write Latin plant names

The first two names are written in italics, with a capital letter for the generic name. Any cultivars or variety after that is in standard text with capital letters if necessary (ie ‘Martin Johnson’).

A fun present for a future generation of botanists?

Although Perfectly Peculiar Plants (Quarto £12.99) is aimed at 8-12 year olds, I felt I learned alot from it. It would be a great present for anyone wanting to interest their children in botany, conservation or gardening. And if you enjoy reading aloud to children, I think it would work for children younger than eight, too.

There’s a fuller interview with Dr Chris Thorogood on this video:

The Oxford Botanic Gardens and Arboretum are the oldest botanic gardens in Britain. They’re open every day, with a series of lectures, workshops and tours, and over 6,000 plants.

It’s a pleasure to see such beautifully shaped and cared-for trees.

The Oxford Botanic Gardens are a green heart right in the middle of Oxford – check for different opening hours in winter and summer.

Dating back to 1621! The Oxford Botanic Gardens & Arboretum…a delightful place to visit.

The Middlesized Garden blog is published every Sunday morning, so do join us. And do subscribe to the Middlesized Garden YouTube channel which uploads every Saturday.

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My escape from fear to a healing garden

Many people are now talking openly about their physical and mental challenges and how their garden or gardening has helped them.   I want to talk about my story of trauma, post-traumatic stress disorder and the garden, and I hope my story may help other people.

I’ve also done a video on this, so if you prefer watching to reading a post, it’s here:

Going back to the beginning…

I was born in Gibraltar, but as my father worked for the British government we moved a lot in my childhood. After five safe and happy years living in South East England, my brothers and I found ourselves living in an unsettled and unhappy Caribbean country.

A Caribbean paradise?

Thirty-one years of an exceptionally brutal dictatorship had ended in the dictator’s assassination around a year earlier. It was also around the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis, so everything felt very unsafe.

A series of revolutions culminated in a civil war. Fearing ‘another Cuba’, the US Army intervened and we fled the country, briefly becoming refugees.

This notice, from an old family film, sums the sense of upheaval that lingers from that time.

Earthquakes and revolutions…

After we left the Caribbean island, we then lived in another South American country. It was a wonderful place to live, but it still had the occasional revolution, a higher level of violent crime than Britain and several earthquakes.

So I knew that the world could literally open up and swallow you at any moment. But I always believed that I would be safe if I got back to England. When I had nightmares, it was always about trying to escape to England to be safe.

But I thought England was safe…

I came to live in England permanently when I was 18. Eventually I began working in journalism and moved into a house with one of my brothers.

On the second night we were in the house, I woke up to find four men in my room, three with balaclavas concealing their faces. They attacked me with some kind of bat and also with a knife. We subsequently discovered the knife had been taken from our own kitchen.

I screamed and my brother came tearing down the stairs to help. Fortunately they ran away.

I have no idea how long it all took, because although I wasn’t concussed I seemed to have lost a small piece of memory. It took several hours before I realised that my arms and legs had knife cuts across them and that my back was bruised from the blows.

The immediate effects

I felt as if I had stepped into a strange, unknown world, where everything seemed very bright and loud and menacing, and where I could no longer assess whether a knock at the door was someone come to hurt me or just a delivery.

For the first ten days or so, I had to deal with considerable physical pain too, as the blows and some of the knife cuts were painful, although not ultimately serious. Were those footsteps behind me a threat? What was that noise in the middle of the night?

My brain no longer knew what the rules were or how to evaluate even the most ordinary event. My senses were on hyper-alert, so that every time I dropped asleep I was jerked awake as if someone had thrown a bucket of cold water over me.

Above all, it was exhausting and painful, as if someone had imprisoned and tortured me.

What is PTSD?

It was, of course, my own mind that had imprisoned me and for a while it seemed as if it refused to let me go. Friends were enormously supportive and I went to counselling, which had some limited help.

A psychiatrist friend of mine has since told me ‘Bad things happen, and when they do, it’s normal to feel terrible.

But I was still feeling many of the effects over a year later and that is post traumatic stress disorder or PTSD. Everyone said that time would help – and it does, but so slowly and in small increments.

Take on new challenges?

However, over the next four years, I got my dream job working on women’s magazines, met my husband and had twins, all of which was wonderful.

Taking on new challenges helped me, but the jumpiness, the sleepless nights and the inability to properly distinguish between a real and imagined threat – it was all still there. I began to get panic attacks in the London Underground and in shops.

Eventually I went to my GP who signed me off sick for two months.

Learn to ‘stop and stare’.

One of the counsellors advised me to do four twenty minute sessions of relaxation and meditation a day.

‘I couldn’t possibly find time for that,’ I said. ‘Well, do you want to get better or not?’ was the reply.

It was the first time I properly understood that unless I looked after myself, then I wasn’t going to be able to look after my family and do my job. There is a reason why you have to put your own oxygen mask on first.

One of the exercises I was asked to do – every day – was to lie down in a calm and comfortable place, with the door shut and away from all distractions. ‘Take yourself round somewhere beautiful,’ they said. ‘Imagine you’re on a Caribbean beach.’

Not relaxing memories….

Well, my memories of Caribbean beaches involved armed soldiers. Not relaxing.

A healing garden

So I chose a garden for my meditation. Not a famous garden, and not my own garden (we only had a small courtyard at the time).

It was the garden of a house for sale, which a friend had shown me once. The owners had already gone, so garden was slightly overgrown. But you could still walk up its lavender lined front path and go round the side to see the beautiful raised veg beds just outside the back door.

It was long and thin, a typical English town garden in many ways, and divided up into sections. There was a tiny lawn, rose borders, a wilder part with long meadow grass and fruit trees.

As this was over twenty years ago, that blend of cultivation and wildness was before its time. It was a revelation to me.

I don’t have any photographs of that first garden, but I do have memories of other peaceful gardens. I think this scene from the Agapanthe garden in Normandy sums up the sense of a journey to a healing garden, with somewhere to sit to enjoy the greenery.

Create your own healing garden

My meditation is a mental walk around this garden, imagining the sounds, feelings, scents and sights of each part of it. I’ve put together a meditation based on going round a garden in a separate video, which you can adapt for your own imaginary garden tour if you like.

I think one of the reasons I chose a garden was also because my favourite childhood book was The Secret Garden, a wonderful Edwardian children’s book about a boy in a wheelchair, a traumatised orphan girl and a farmer’s son coming together to heal by restoring a hidden garden.

Then I started to love real gardens

As I recovered from the panic attacks, I started to notice plants and flowers in the London streets around me.

It was a grey, windy February, but suddenly the brilliant yellow blaze of forsythia tumbled over a wall. A few snowdrops or anemones pushed shyly up in a front garden. The spicy floral scent of witch hazels wafted their elusive breath across the road. A friend’s winter flowering jasmine twined around her front railings.

There’s something very special about flowers like witch hazel which emerge in the bleakness of February.

I could see that even in a bare, cold winter there could be hope, joy and beauty.

A healing garden isn’t only the answer…

Of course, the meditation around the garden wasn’t the only thing that helped. I had Cognitive Behavioural Therapy which focused more on tips for managing panicky situations rather than examining either the trauma of the burglary or my time in South America.

No-one could promise me I would never be attacked again, but tips that helped me sleep a little better or shop without a panic attack, all reduced the stress.

At the time we had a tiny courtyard – around 15ft wide and 20ft long, but I longed for a garden of my own. When we moved out of London, I got my garden. But I discovered, with a shock that loving gardens wasn’t quite enough.

I had to discover the difference between weeds and flowers, though finding my own ‘gardening style’ was the most important part.

I had to learn about gardening – fast!

It takes time

Healing and gardening both take time to learn. And it also takes time to make your garden yours. Even if you find a house with a beautiful garden, we all have to discover our own gardening style.

It took us about six years to work out what we wanted. That was the beginning of a whole new adventure, which culminated in the Middlesized Garden blog and YouTube channel.

I don’t visit that secret imaginary garden so often now – but sometimes I still need to. If I wake with a start at 3am, I re-create my walk around that garden I only visited once. I usually I fall asleep again quite quickly.

Now I’m interested and excited to find out all the plants, ideas and strategies that gardening has to offer.

I’m still learning, so do join me on that gardening journey, and let me know if you’d like to hear more about gardens and stress relief as well as garden ideas and inspiration.

And if you have a story of stress and gardening, please do share it in the comments below. If you’ve blogged or vlogged it, then feel free to include a link – everyone’s approach is different and sharing stories can help us all. Thank you.

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Do you really need to do a soil test?

‘So how many people in this room have done a soil test?’

This question was asked by garden designer Adam Frost at a recent talk at the Painters Forstal Gardening Club.

There were over 80 keen gardeners in the room. About half a dozen raised their hands. Embarrassingly I wasn’t one of them – even though a friend of mine had lent me a soil tester and was also in the audience. Rumbled!

Only about half a dozen keen gardeners in this room had done a soil test.

Many gardening friends say they don’t feel they need to do a soil test. ‘I know what I can grow in my garden.’

However, I’ve had very erratic results in the veg patch over several years. Several people have suggested that it’s my soil. Everyone who grows plants has failures – but if plants are consistently failing to thrive in a particular spot, it’s clear that a soil test is essential.

And if you move to a new house, you can circumvent the many years of discovering that acers (for example) don’t do well in your soil. If I’d done a soil test when we moved in, I wouldn’t have planted either of the two acers that struggled for a few years, then died. I would have planted another type of tree, and it would now be a decent size.

And no, seeing your neighbour’s lovely acer isn’t always a help. There are often pockets of different soil types, even in middle-sized town gardens.

It’s time to conquer my fear of anything that reminds me of school science classes and do a soil test.

Which soil test to buy?

I looked online for reviews, and also on Amazon to see which soil tests were rated most highly. The Testwest Soil Test kit and the Moon City 3-in-1 Soil Tester seemed to be top favourites.

I bought one of each, intending to compare them. (Links to Amazon are affiliate links, which mean I may get a small fee if you buy through them, but it won’t affect the price you pay.)

In fact, they are completely different. The TestWest Soil Kit tests pH, Nitrogen, Potassium & Phosphorus. The Moon City 3-in-1 tests pH, moisture and light. So actually both very useful.

Start with the really easy part

The Moon City 3-in-1 is outrageously easy. I cannot imagine why I worried about it. All you do is jam it in the soil.

The Moon City Three Way Soil Tester – it really couldn’t be easier. It measures how much light and moisture a particular spot gets, and the pH, but not the level of nutrients. Excuse the weeds…

It has a three-way switch, which you change accordingly to whether you are measuring the moisture in the soil, the light available in that spot or the pH. The dial responds quickly. Apart from the awkwardness of having to lie flat on the ground to read the results, you have an instant easy answer.

Bearing in mind that Adam Frost tested dozens of spots in his garden, I did the same. The moisture readings were what I expected, and in most of the garden, the pH read as neutral (pH 7).

But in one spot – one of my veg beds – it read as very acid, with a pH below 4. I looked up what grows well in such soil. Nasturtiums, apparently.

And that part of that veg bed is full of self-seeded nasturtiums! They don’t go anywhere else in the garden, but I’d never thought to wonder why.

These nasturtiums self-seed vigorously, but only in one of the borders – the one that is exceptionally low for nutrients and pH level.

The next soil test

I needed to delve deeper, so suppressed unhappy memories of the school science lab and opened the Testwest Soil Test Kit. I’ve video-d this. If you are someone who hates reading instructions, you may find watching less tedious.If you just want the soil test ‘how to’, fast forward to 1 minute, 16 seconds.

The Testwest Soil Test kit has four vials, each with a different chemical, for measuring the pH, Nitrogen, Potassium & Phosphorus. You don’t measure Nitrogen until the spring, so I didn’t do that.

There are also four little sample bottles, each with a coloured cap, a small amount of powder in a coloured marked container and a tiny coloured spoon. The colours are the key!

You dig out 50 grams of soil from various spots in the garden, and add 200ml of water. I took the kitchen scales outside, and a measuring jug.

Put the soil and water in a jam jar, shake it for 30 seconds or so, then leave until it separates again.

Repeat for several parts of the garden. I can only think that Adam Frost must have a magnificent collection of jam jars if he did dozens of soil tests in his garden.

Keep everything labelled and written down

I used Post-it Notes to make sure that I knew which jar connected with which part of the garden. And I wrote the results of each test down as soon as I had them, on the relevant Post-It note.

That may sound simplistic, but if you’re juggling three different tests for six different soil test samples, it can easily get confusing.

The linked colours on the test tubes, vials, powder containers and spoons mean that the test is not difficult, although the final stages of the soil test do get a bit fiddly.

Once your soil and water has separated out again, you use the pipette (provided) to add 3mls of slightly cloudy water to a test tube. Then add 0.5ml of the liquid in the vial that matches that test tube and a ‘heaped spoonful’ of the powder (the matching coloured spoon is tiny). Shake thoroughly and leave for around five minutes to settle.

The Testwest Soil Tester Kit measures pH, Nitrogen, Phosporus and Potassium in your soil.

Then you match it against a palette of colours in the booklet provided.

By this time, I was not only impressed with Adam Frost’s (theoretical) collection of jam jars, but also his patience.

Interesting results

My soil test results indicated that most of my borders have ‘medium’ amounts of nutrients. And the Testwest kit pH test results echoed those of the Moon City 3-in-1. I have neutral soil at a pH of 7. Lucky me.

However, the veg bed that had shown up as acid in the Moon City test also showed as very deficient in both Phosphorus and Potassium in the Testwest soil test results. I’m not really certain why, as I thought I’d given all the beds a good mulch of homemade compost every autumn. But it’s possible that I missed that bed out.

The veg bed is very low in phosphorus, according to the chart.

It would certainly explain why the veg have not grown well there – but the nasturtiums have flourished – this year.

So what now?

The whole garden needs a proper mulch this autumn. There’s nothing to worry about if you have a ‘medium’ level of nutrients, but it’s not exactly bursting with health, is it? I don’t propose to add specific fertilisers, but I’ll re-test next year and see whether I have to do anything more.

I shall be following Charles Dowding’s No Dig advice – although I can find no trace of reference to soil tests in his excellent book Organic Gardening, the Natural No-Dig Way. (There is a pithy remark on ‘soil health has more to do with biology than chemistry.’ So we’ll take that as a ‘no soil test’ then, shall we?)

But I shall let the compost sit on the top of the soil, allowing the worms and micro-organisms to do the hard work of digging for me.

I also see that the addition of seaweed may be helpful, and we live near the sea. You are generally allowed to take small amounts of seaweed from the beach in the UK, but check your local council regulations.

Nearby Whitstable beach. You don’t have an automatic right to take seaweed off a beach so ask your local Council – or other beach owners such as the National Trust.

Meanwhile perhaps I should try out that recipe for Nasturtium Pesto I spotted somewhere on the Internet the other day….

Let me know if you have views on soil tests and whether you’ve found them useful. And if you have other brand recommendations, let us know in the comments below. Thank you!

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