Homes and Gardens / Gardening
Gardening in the city
One of my favourite views in Bristol (and we are not a city that is short on great views) is the sight that greets you as you wind down Bridge Valley Road towards the Portway and the base of the Avon Gorge
Image of Lia by Kirstie Young
The other side of the river – that verging-on-vertical stretch of Leigh Woods – is a patchwork of lime-green turning to dark green through spring and summer, patterned with orange and yellow splodges in autumn, and then turns to a haze of purple through winter.
Autumn colour is such a fleeting thing that I have been reticent about giving over precious garden space to it. You have to remember to look, and I can’t always guarantee that I will, head down in daily life: packed lunches, deadlines and parents evenings. But there is one particular plant that does the autumn colour thing spectacularly but keeps some tricks up its sleeves for winter too. It’s also small, and a good reminder that autumn colour doesn’t have to be gorge sized.
The plant I have in mind – and that I am planting in my garden this winter – is a spindle, Euonymus europaeus ‘Red Cascade’. This is a cultivated variety but spindles are native woodlanders: you might even find one in Leigh Woods. In autumn its leaves glow an amazing clear pinky red, but once they drop they reveal oddly sculptural, dangling seed capsules in fuchsia pink and orange. ‘Red Cascade’ is a particularly vibrant-leaved version, and I will get it into the ground now: a great time for planting any shrubs that drop their leaves. It can be a little piece of gorge in my Bishopston back garden.
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