GARDENS:Autumn is working colourful tricks - and not just on trees and shrubs, writes Jane Powers.
The longer I garden, the more I see. Things that passed me by before, or that seemed unremarkable, have, over the years, become stimulating parts of the garden picture. Much as I'd love to think that this appreciation of the heretofore unnoticed is a sign of my increasing sophistication, it's probably not. More likely it's just grasping at straws, especially at this end of the year, and especially after the spirit-drowning summer that we've just had.
Anyway, one of the straws that is keeping me buoyant this autumn is the show of genteel decrepitude that the mophead hydrangea is putting on right now. Its bundles of blossom, which are normally of the brash, in-your-face pink favoured by teenagers, have gradually turned to chintzy old-lady tones. The pigment has faded from some parts of the individual flowers, leaving only the palest blush or a mint-washed ivory, and it has rushed to others, suffusing them with hectic flushes, deep-red liver spots and cerise measles.
Before my eyes were opened, the dying hydrangea heads were just that: one-foot-in-the-grave plant parts, waiting for the secateurs to tidy them away. And, because the received wisdom was that you don't cut hydrangea heads until spring (they protect the shoots from frost) the unlovely things would hang around all winter, looking more and more dead, like Monty Python's ex-parrot nailed to its perch.
But now, thanks to my old-and-wise eyes, the splotchy, feverish hydrangeas have become one of the high points of the season. No two of the big and blowsy flower heads are the same, as each leaches and gathers colour in its own pattern and to its own schedule. While one head might be pale and delicately spotted, the next can be as richly saturated as a well-hung steak.
Elsewhere in the garden autumn is working more colourful tricks - and I don't mean on trees and shrubs. Of course, we all love the turning leaf that colder nights and clear sunny days bring, but I'm talking more about what's going on closer to the soil: the herbaceous plants that put on a last blast of colour before retiring underground for the winter.
My favourite are the peonies: the stems glow red, and the foliage, as it begins to lose its tautness, becomes chased with plum, orange and yellow, until finally it collapses in a heap of tawdry rags. Herbaceous peonies have a relatively short (but exquisite) flowering period, yet they give entertainment for three out of four seasons.
In spring their emerging shoots are bronze, coral or beetroot red (the perfect foil for orangey tulips); in early summer they produce overblown and fragrant blooms, after which their well-defined, elegant foliage is a good green backdrop for later flowers; and finally, in September and October they ignite and become ground-hugging bonfires.
Another common plant that gives autumn pleasure is the hosta - especially huge-leaved kinds such as Hosta sieboldiana var. elegans. As the green chlorophyll drains away from the great quilted paddles of foliage, it leaves behind a warm, mustardy yellow. Frost (if you are lucky enough to get it) invests the leaves with a glassy quality for a day or two, until eventually they flop into an exhausted pile.
Asparagus is a fine multipurpose plant. After you've had your fill of the harvest, the remaining tight spears push up and unfurl into two-metre froths of diaphanous foliage.
Around now the dark green turns to strawy gold, while the occasional blood-red berry gleams from within the rustling filigree. Berries such as this are a bonus on herbaceous plants.
One of the best berriers is Iris foetidissima, the so-called stinking iris (its crushed leaves are supposed to smell of roast beef). The ugly-duckling flowers are a dirty, veined, browny mauve, but within a few months they produce pods that each hatch out at least two dozen scarlet beads, so bright and shiny that they are not quite believable.
Some of the best herbaceous plants for autumn colour are the grasses. Most turn at least a warm buttery yellow, while others erupt into fountains of orange, russet and red. The evergreen pheasant grass (previously known as Stipa arundinacea but now going by the unwieldy handle of Anemanthele lessoniana) becomes speckled and striated with rust, which nicely complements its everyday olive green. Purple moor grass (Molinia caerula) goes pale yellow, after which it obligingly drops all its leaves, so you don't have to cut it back.
Almost all Miscanthus sinensis varieties have good autumn tints. Those with the best orange or red tones, according to a recent Royal Horticultural Society trial, are 'Ferner Osten', 'Ghana', 'Septemberrot', 'Kaskade', 'Kleine Silberspinne', 'Nippon' and 'Rotsilber'.
Poets, romantics and scientists instruct us to look up at the trees for our autumn thrills, but in most gardens you can get your kicks at ground level, too.