Foliage Color in a Cottage Garden

Most foliage colour in a cottage garden has to be provided by autumn subjects. Other­wise it is difficult to get happy blends and associations. Strongly variegated trees and shrubs are alien to our concept and some of the brighter yellow and purple foliage sub­jects are equally tasteless.

The stagshorn sumach, Rhus typhina, is a splendid example of what we should look for. An easy going small tree or shrub with large pinnate leaves which turn vivid orange and red in the autumn, each branch crowned with contrasting conical deep red-brown clusters of fruits. A suckering sub­ject, this should be planted on poor soil in an out of the way place where it can sucker freely and provide a colourful background for choicer subjects.

The elderberries are similar propositions; for although highly decorative, they are a bit coarse for the more intimate garden and make a better background than focal point. Most of the green-leaved kinds turn yellow during the autumn, but the purple-leaved Sambucus nigra ‘Purpurea’ and much-divided fern-leaved elder, S. n. ‘Laciniata’ are excellent throughout the summer as well.

Crab apples can also provide useful sum­mer leaf colour, although traditionally thought of as autumn foliage and fruiting subjects. The hybrid Malus purpurea is one of the best all round kinds with dark pur­plish-green foliage and during spring, rosy-crimson flowers. The small apple-like fruits are light crimson-purple and very similar to those of the well known ‘Profusion’. In many ways this remarkable cultivar is superior to the straightforward hybrid, sporting coppery-crimson leaves and wine-red flowers. Be careful how you use it though, as in some gardens it could look a little brash. I would also be cautious about the use of other first class kinds like ‘Golden Hornet’ and ‘Red Sentinel’. They are so good that in the cottage garden they appear too good to be true and then are out of keeping.

Few early cottagers would have expected a third of the yield of fruits provided by ‘Golden Hornet’. But it would not have been this crab that they would have favoured. The crab apples of cottage gar­dens always had to yield useful fruits as well as provide decoration and in many cases this would have been that old stalwart ‘John Downie’, a lovely little tree that is as popu­lar now as it was at the end of the last century. Of small neat habit, it has typical apple foliage, white blossoms and gorgeous, large, conical, orange and red fruits that make a fine jelly.