October Foliage: Yellow

Although Christina is not in her Hesperides Garden at the moment and is instead experiencing autumn in the UK countryside she is still hosting this month’s Garden Bloggers Foliage Day. We can therefore be thankful to her for encouraging us to notice and value the foliage in our gardens more than we might otherwise do – I certainly do.

For the last few months I have focussed on a specific aspect of foliage for GBFD such as the shape or pattern or texture of foliage, and because autumn is now gathering momentum this month I am looking at the colour yellow, such as the field maple tree in our little woodland shown above. Observing my witch hazels in recent months has made me aware of how different they are in their timing and habits, and particularly now their leaves are changing colour. I have been thrilled to see the shades of red on Hamamelis ‘Ruby Glow’ but couldn’t say whether the leaves have turned as red as this in other years; none of the others have shown signs of red, either turning immediately butter yellow, or gradually going through a mottled and then veined stage  like H Diane and H ‘Magic Fire’ (below). Magic Fire is in fact a more definite ‘chrome yellow’ than the picture on the right suggests.

Our other trees cannot compare with the witch hazels and our neighbour’s beech tree, but our hazels and silver birches are gradually turning and falling to form a yellow carpet:

The magnolia turns to a straw-like yellow, even paler than the rich creamy yellow of the hazel, but the Hydrangea petiolaris is a full-on almost custard yellow, drawing the attention of any passing rambler more than at any other time of year.

Many of the clematis leaves just shrivel up at the end of the season, but I found yellow leaves on one of the C alpinas (below left) whilst on the right the wisteria has just started to turn and in a few weeks the path at the back of the house will be covered in dry yellow leaves:

Most of the hostas go through a yellow stage too, but not always very gracefully (the lost label one below looks better than most at this time of year) but I can’t be sure is this little potted Acer ‘Orange Dream’ is going through a red and then yellow stage, or vice versa:

When viewed together, these photos suggest a predominance of yellow in the garden, but with only one October night close to being frosty so far this year, foliage is still overwhelmingly GREEN!