Autumnal October

Some of the wonderful autumnal photographs from our Members and Visitors this month...

Thank you to everyone who contribues photographs each month - it's wonderful to see the changing seasons reflected in your gardens so please keep them coming!

David and Lynn

It was a pleasure to welcome our first Virtual Visitors to our Zoom meeting this month - David and Lynn from Belper in Derbyshire. As the photographs show, they have done an amazing job transforming the garden of their former mill worker's house.

Alison

Some lovely colours of autumn, and a reminder that October doesn't mean the end of caterpillar damage to brassicas

Eileen

We have had a lot of rain and grey skys recently, so it's lovely to see a picture of the beautiful Britten's Pond in sunshine.

Eileen also has shared some nice colours of Autumn in the Globe Artichoke flower and the Virginia Creeper, some unusual colours of Autumn with a late, but verly welcome Gladioli, and the not-so-nice colours of Autumn with some honey fungus fruiting bodies.

Betty

After having a bit of a disappointing year for Runner Beans, Betty was pleased to see that they had found refuge and were growing nicely up in her Robinia pseudoacacia. Now, if only they were low enough to pick!

Ann and Brian

A beautiful array of standard and half-standard Fuchsias from Ann and Brian. Some of these standards are over 20 years old, and are a great reminder of now versatile and floriferous these plants can be and the amazing effect you can achieve by growing them up as a standard to have colour at different heights

...and Ann also provided us with two competitions this month - A 'Name That Plant' and a 'Spot the Difference'

The plant with pretty bell shaped flowers was kindly identified by our wonderful speaker for the evening, Sophie Leguil as a Correa or Australian Fuchsia. Hardy to only about -5 so best suited for very sheltered gardens, it grows to a shrub of about 1m x 1m

A lovely picture of a couple of scarecrows that are doing a sterling job keeping the birds off some newly seeded lawn. Another 'top tip' for deterring would-be grass seed eaters is the use of silver-foil helium balloons tied to a stout weight - the movement and the light reflection seems to do the trick of keeping birds away

Chris S

The amazing showcase gardens of RHS Rosemoor in North Devon is captured here. The kitchen gardens are just stunning and prove that growing fruit and vegetables does not have to be something boring or confined to the far corner of the garden.

Maggie - Dunsborough Park

Dunsborough Park near Ripley were able to open for a couple of weeks in September to celebrate their Dazzling Dahlias. Here are some of Maggie's photographs showing why Dahlias have rightfully become so popular as a showstopper plant for the late summer and autumn