October Garden Tour 2025 - Early Autumn Update 🍁

We’re in the second week of October, the weather is surprisingly beautiful for this time of year in the UK, and I finally had a chance to show you the rest of the garden that I couldn’t fit into the previous video. In this tour I’m walking you through the tree border (my husband’s pride!), the newer flower border by the garage, dahlias that are still looking great, and the area that got a bit battered during the early September storm.

What’s in this video

View from the kitchen - this is what we see every day when we sit at the table. Everything was created from scratch in just 3 years.
Tree border - started with one apple tree and turned into a mini tree collection: olive tree, ornamental cherry ‘Royal Burgundy’, magnolia shrub, lilac, apple ‘James Grieve’, apple ‘Gala’, and several young pear trees (Conference and Concord) in pots.
Acer with red stems - gorgeous autumn highlight, foliage changing from lime green to orange and yellow towards the top.
Underplanting and perennials - lingonberries that want to take over, hostas, lilies (already finished for the year), Brunnera ‘Jack Frost’, propagated eryngium/erigeron, a blueberry, and even some rosemary.
David Austin roses - ‘The Generous Gardener’, ‘Queen of Sweden’, ‘Port Sunlight’ and the climbing ‘The Pilgrim’. Even after the storm and cutting back, they bounce right back.
Garage flower border - the newest bed, created as an answer to the tree border. It suffered the most in the storm: the clematis montana trellis was ripped off the wall and had to be supported with temporary bamboo canes.
Dahlias - the potted ones on the deck got hit by the early cold nights, but the ones in the border are still going strong: ‘Brown Sugar’ and ‘Labella Epoch’ look fantastic.
“Operational corner” - the messy but real part of the garden where clay soil, gravel and building leftovers didn’t stop verbena, rosemary and thyme from growing.

Built from a blank new-build plot

When we bought the house there was nothing in the garden - just gravel, weeds and the garage. Every border, raised area, path and planting spot you see in the video was built by us over the last three years. It shows what you can do step by step, even on poor ground.

Husband’s tree border 🌳

The story in the video is that after we finished the kitchen garden, my husband wanted “something of his own” - so we started a tree border. First came the apple tree, then more trees… and then a couple more pears in pots. For the size of this UK garden it’s probably a bit too many trees, but as I say in the video: it is what it is!

Storm damage and fixes

A strong wind in early September ripped off the wall trellis that was holding the clematis and partly the rose. I had to cut a lot of it out, lift the trellis and secure it temporarily with bamboo canes. The proper fix will happen once everything dies back a bit more.

Dahlias & roses - still going

Despite cooler nights, some dahlias are still flowering and giving that late-season colour. The roses from David Austin are real workhorses - even if you cut them back or they get damaged, they simply grow again.

Watch it on YouTube

👉 Watch: October Garden Tour 2025 on YouTube

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