Autumn garden - winter pansies and dry hydrangea flowers

Winter Pansies, photograph copyright Vivien Blackburn

The summer flowers are still going strong but it's time to think about winter - shudder. Yesterday we popped into a local nursery I like, to buy some trays of winter pansies to plant in the old Victorian chimney pots on the patio. They will be cheerful to look out on as the days get colder :>)

And very very appealing to paint. I love the little whiskered faces of pansies.



I just hate to see flowers like these in a clashing jumble of colours - the burgundies and yellows and oranges and purples all planted together. I chose soft pale yellows, blue purples and pinker purples and the ones above in the same colours as the little wild ones - they all go beautifully and complement each other. I always think that the way you plant flowers is rather like painting - you have drifts of colour and then echoes of it elsewhere in the garden to balance and link. (I only have a tiny garden and it's quite wild and tangled and overgrown - but I love it :>) )

Those gorgeous blue hydrangea heads are now an incredible range of colours with deep pinks that are starting to fade to the soft neutral beige they'll end up.





There's a real nip in the air and the trees are turning fast and losing their leaves.

Does anyone know if begonias would over-winter indoors? (continuing to grow I mean). I've got a beautiful double soft, very pale apricot one I'd like to keep and a hanging basket with a vibrant red one - ditto.

We don't have anywhere cool to store them and so they always die with the first colder weather. They are flowering beautifully and it would be great to bring them in if they'd survive the central heating and year round growing?

Link to those hydrangeas flowering and here

and digital experiments with them

more flowers

Comments

dinahmow said…
Re: begonias. If you mean the tuberous begonia, sorry to disappoint, but they do need to rest. You will probably have a little longer if you bring them onto a sheltered porch now, but in a few weeks I'd say they'll be ready to go to sleep.Keep the corm dry over winter and enjoy them next year.
10:21 pm
Yellow said…
The soft texture of the fading hydrangea heads is just beautiful. You have photographed all these images with great sensitivity and love.
3:57 pm
vivien said…
oh that's a shame Dinah - but I suspected it was so. I'll give it a go, though I've never succeeded yet! they never grow the following year :>(

Thanks Steph :>)
8:37 am
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