Top ten plants for October gardens

This clump-forming, mid-green leaved perennial will reward you with a host of large, crimson flowers in the early autumn. The flowers last up until the first frosts as long as you can give it a warm spot in full sun.

Next is a hardy shrub that provides great autumn interest when its leaves turn fantastic shades of orange and red as the temperatures start to drop. When the sun shines, the plant reveals cheerful pale yellow and red colour stems to brighten the garden during the dull, cold winter months.

This cheerful looking perennial is a very late flowering daisy plant producing numerous sprays of very white flowers. The flowers turn their face to the sun, just like sunflowers do! They look wonderful placed at the back of the flower border and happily grow without the need for staking too.

These tender perennial corms produce statuesque scented flowers in the autumn which make great cut flowers. They are best grown in pots and stored over winter in a frost-free garage or building until the following spring when pots can be brought outdoors again.

It’s sometimes difficult to find good, easy to care for plants that grow well in dry shade. However, lily turf is one such plant that will thrive in those conditions. What’s more, they have handsome, grass-like, evergreen leaves that form neat mounds for low maintenance gardening. Another bonus is the spikes of bright violet flowers that appear at this time of year.

Grasses are looking particularly good now with their handsome, subtly coloured seed heads. The mid-green leaves of this variety have wonderful cream stripes running along their length. As well, there are soft brown seedheads which can be left over winter to create additional interest in the border.

This group of unassuming looking plants are one of the longest flowering, so they are perfect for pollinators. This variety produces lots of long, wide spikes of bright red flowers from late summer into early autumn. What’s more, the large, mid-green leaves are great at keeping the weeds at bay.

This is the time of the year when sedum plants come into their own. Their wide, shallow flowerheads attract lots of butterflies and bees and are easy to grow and look after. ‘Red Cauli’ will be covered in bright red coloured, small domed heads of flowers. The stems and leaves are both dark red making this a very striking plant for the front of a flower border.

If you have a spot with damp soil in partial shade, fill it with an exotic looking plant like this. The late-flowering woodland plant has small white flowers so thickly dotted with purple that the petals look almost mauve.

Amelanchier are small deciduous trees that are ideal for the smaller garden. They produce pretty, white blossom in spring, small red fruits in June and, at this time of the year, brightly coloured foliage. Amelanchier love growing in boggy, damp soil, and for the best autumn colour plant them in full sun.