Garden guru: Autumn warmth

Lavender heads make the most of the ageing process. Photo / Supplied

It's a bit of a sore subject talking of greying - my own hair has been heading that way for years but I'm still in denial. Do you hide it and dye it or simply make a virtue of getting older?

Richard Gere does the latter and the women still come flocking. He's not ashamed to face up to fading and many gardens come to this tricky time of year too with a good attitude - secure in themselves, they stride into winter without missing a beat. But others seem to fall apart soon after Christmas - a bit of heat and they either shoot away at a the speed of sound, become a jungle and fall over all over the place, or do the reverse by turning up their toes in a sulky wilt and admitting defeat early in the game.

The secret is to include a good proportion of robust evergreens in the garden and combine them with plants that retire with dignity and poise.

By evergreens I don't mean those highly polished and plastic-like plants in rich emeralds and forest greens, such as griselinias and camellias. You need a few of those, of course but in late summer what you want more is a few ingredients which tell the story of the season and reflect the dry and dusty time you may have been having.

Just think on the lines of the colour of old raincoats - browns, tans, sages and mossy greens - all those drought-tolerant Mediterranean species are perfect. The bronze-leaved tones in some of our natives also look at their best in the autumn garden.

Haloragus erecta 'Wanganui Bronze' is an unusual example. This short-lived perennial seeds rather too enthusiastically but its chocolate leaves look especially good sitting behind the icing purple flowers of ornamental oxalis or other late bulbs such as nerines.

Paler and much more striking is the khaki whipcord hebe 'James Stirling'. The animated sprays of this are like a conifer, a nice change for a hebe instead of the unusual amorphous blob. This variety positively glows even though it is shy to flower.

Such burned-out shades of summer look good grouped together rather like you might see lichen colonies on a rock. Or you can create more of a spark by parking them beside bonfires of chrysanthemums or late dahlias, or throwing in some rich cobalt blues from salvias in warm areas or stately monkshood (aconitum) in cooler climes.

The plants with faded muted colours which work best always have strong shapes and textures. Shrubs such as phlomis, ballota and purple sage are ideal.

Lavender, when even the last drop of colour has retreated from the blooms, still holds interest as a study in pale sage. The chubby seedheads make interesting textures and shapes - just the very type of thing to carry you through the colder months with ease. Why not go around the garden and do a seedhead checkup, noting if you have any dried arrangements which will create interesting silhouettes and feed the birds later on? Not all seedheads have to be as dramatic as a cardiocrinum lily - if they are quieter, just mass plant them. In contrast, achilleas have tabletops, monardas have whorls. There's a satisfying cone at the centre of echinaceas, and astilbes stand to attention for months, with battalions of stiff little javelins. In a South Island garden I visited I was struck by banks of gypsophila. Its clouds of white flowers gave rise to the name babies breath but it is equally decorative when faded to a pale buff colour that really leaps off the page when caught in low sunshine.

Many grasses become interesting in winter. The deciduous sorts die off dramatically and our native evergreen grasses become more noticeable as colour retreats from the garden in general and these gentler treasures stand out.

I love the deep ruby colour of sedums as they fade.

In winter the variety Autumn Joy - now called, annoyingly, Herbstfreude - lasts the best and is almost as dramatic in dull brown as it is now bleeding through the borders between native tussocks.

It's easy to be seduced by the flashing lights of autumn leaves and to be lured by glistening berries at this time of year and these are useful in your plant arsenal. But in the rush for glamour don't forget those gems which gently slip into winter - they don't slam the door on their way out and it's comforting to find them around when the thermometer plunges.

Could do this week

* Don't waste falling leaves and debris cleared from the garden. A Dalek-like plastic compost heap is useful, but for a family with a decent sized garden build your own - 1.5sq m and preferably with a neighbouring second bay you can be filling as the first rots down.
* Ease up in the watering of house plants as growth slows.
* Although roses are finishing, feed them with potash to help them develop strong roots and stems.
* Collect the seed from flowering annuals such as cosmos, cleome, nicotiana (pictured) and lilies.