MAKE AUTUMN AWESOME!

It’s not quite winter yet – here’s how you can keep the warmth in your garden as the weather cools down

You may associate autumn with brilliant, burnt-coloured foliage floating to the ground to create a kaleidoscopic carpet, but the season also sees a surge of spirited, flowering plants playing up in the softer seasonal light before winter puts them all to bed. Blackwood Ridge Restaurant and Gardens, located to the north west of Melbourne, shows you how to steal the march on spring and summer and be more glorious in a gentler glow.

1 TUPELOS ARE REAL HONEYS

The brilliant green summer foliage of stands of tupelo trees (Nyssa sylvatica) ease into mellow yellow in early autumn, allowing your autumn flowers to shine. The foliage then turns into iridescent yellow, orange and red after the flowers fade, leaving you with the skeletal remains of a tree! that is like the finest lace through which low winter light can bless your beds in time for spring.

ABOUT THE GARDEN

Set over 2ha, Blackwood Ridge is a collection of eight garden rooms.

The Medici Garden is inspired by the 15th-century terrace garden of the Medici family’s Villa di Castello in Florence.

The Pollinator Garden is all dreamy romanticism with drills of perennials and grasses used to demonstrate the power of their structure, texture, movement and colour.

The Show Garden next to the duck pond demonstrates the powerful impact of mass planting.

The Kitchen Garden is where the restaurant grows and gathers its produce for its renowned lunches.

The soft and curvaceous Spiral Lawn is embraced by an Escallonia ‘Crimson Spire’.