Autumn is the gentle time in Australia. Spring can suddenly present you with a frost that withers the new shoots and tomatoes, but autumn is mostly blue skies. Autumn rain is usually gentle, the great thunder heads of summer gone.
As I write this the persimmons are ripe, big fat orange fruit, and the leaves are just turning orange.
In a few weeks they’ll be stunning, a tree like a blaze of fire, with leaves that will drop to an almost perfect circle on the ground.
I only rake them after they have turned brown. The persimmons will still be hanging like orange globes on the bare tree, unless the birds have eaten them, which they probably will — but then the birds are even more beautiful than the fruit.
The pomegranates are round and gorgeous too. The pomegranate leaves have turned bright yellow and the sugar maples have turned bright red.
You need cold night and warm days and little wind for the best autumn colours, as well as a good wet summer.
We’ve had the wet summer all right and the autumn colours are the most stunning I have ever seen.
If your climate is too warm for traditional autumn leaves, you may still be able to get some autumn colour with crepe myrtles, both the brilliant purple, mauve, pink or white blooms and the reddish orange leaves.
Old-fashioned crepe myrtle varieties were prone to mildew in warm and humid climates — or even if it wasn’t particularly warm and humid.
Modern varieties both bloom longer and are pretty much disease free, no matter what the weather throws at them.
I inherited an old crepe myrtle when we bought our place, and a hideous straggly multi-stemmed bush it is, with vaguely pink blooms almost hidden by the branches.
But the new varieties I planted about five years ago are one of the most stunning features of our autumn garden.
You can prune crepe myrtles to keep them as low shrubs, but if you let them grow tall to their natural 3-6 metres high they have smooth mottled trunks, one of the most beautiful barks you can find in the backyard.
Crepe myrtles require little care to keep them lovely. Prune off spent flowers in winter, if you get around to it.
If you don’t, they’ll eventually turn into small crisp debris that blows away in the wind. Do prune off small low twiggy branches though, to keep the smooth ‘top model perfect’ slim crepe myrtle shape.
Older varieties tended to sucker, so you ended up with a big bushy mass instead of an elegant shape.
Be firm if your crepe myrtle shows any tendency to sucker and snap off suckers at once. Sucker-bushes can become so shaggy that even the flowers look messy, instead of one of the highlights of the autumn garden.
Crepe myrtle flowers seem to jump at you. One day it’ll be an unremarkable green tree; the next there’ll be a brilliant blaze of blooms.
The new varieties flower for months, from early autumn well into winter. Make sure you plant them where you can see the tops of the trees as the plant grows taller.
In cold areas, plant them near a warm sunny wall or in a sheltered courtyard, as they don’t like cold winds.
In return you’ll get the most brilliant of autumn blooms, colour without fuss for decades in almost any garden in Australia.
