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The Fernwood Almanac

September in the garden in the Fernwood Almanac, Ludlow, Shropshire

Warm soil, cool air and rain again: the best planting month of the whole year. Everything you put in now roots before winter and starts a season ahead.

PlateDahlias, still going and worth cutting, September
In flower

In the nursery and in a garden within about ten miles of Ludlow.

What is out in September

  • Dahlia DahliaPeak, and still cutting. Keep taking them for the vase.
  • Michaelmas daisy Symphyotrichum novi-belgiiThe last big nectar source before the frosts.
  • Nerine Nerine bowdeniiBare stems out of dry soil at the foot of a hot wall.
  • Sedum Hylotelephium spectabileCovered in everything with wings, all month.
  • Colchicum Colchicum autumnaleAutumn crocus, and nothing to do with crocus at all.
  • Rudbeckia Rudbeckia fulgidaGoing strong, and will carry into November in a mild year.
Planting calendar

Written for the Marches, where the last frost is usually the middle of May and the first is usually the end of October.

Jobs for September

Plant

  • Spring bulbs, all of them except tulips: daffodil, crocus, allium, muscari, fritillary.
  • Trees, shrubs and perennials. Warm soil and reliable rain make September beat March every time.
  • Spring cabbage, and garlic at the end of the month.

Divide

  • Herbaceous perennials that have got bare in the middle. Two forks back to back, split, replant the outside.

Sow

  • Hardy annuals for an early start: cornflower, larkspur, ammi, calendula.
  • Lawn seed, or lay turf. The best fortnight of the year for both.

Harvest

  • Apples, when the fruit comes away with the stalk on a flat palm. If you have to pull, it is not ready.
On the benches

What we have in during September

  • Spring bulbs, loose and by the kilo
  • Trees and shrubs, potted
  • Turf and lawn seed
  • Autumn-flowering perennials
  • Apple varieties for the Marches

Stock turns over with the calendar. If you are after something specific, ring on 01584 555 0234 before you drive over and we will walk out and look.

From the nursery

A note on this month

If you only plant once a year, do it this month rather than in spring. The soil is still holding summer heat, the rain has come back, and a shrub planted in September has three months of root growth behind it before it is asked to do anything above ground.

Tom Wray, Nursery manager
What's on

Annual fixtures, so the dates move by a day or two but the months do not.

Around this time of year

  • Saturday 6 September, 10:00amWorkshop
    Autumn Colour Planting8 places, £35, 2.5 hours with Helen Marsh.
  • Saturday 11 OctoberEvent
    Apple Day42 of 120 places left. Bring a bag of your own apples for identification by the Marcher Apple Network, press your own juice on the vintage press, and taste your way through thirty heritage varieties from the orchard. Children under twelve go free.
  • Sunday 26 OctoberEvent
    Autumn Plant Fair8 of 200 places left. Fourteen specialist nurseries from across the Marches in the walled garden, with rare and unusual stock you will not find in a garden centre. Early entry at 9am for ticket holders, an hour before the gates open to everyone else.