The Garden Is Changing… 🌿 September Garden Tour
Hello everyone and welcome back. It is the last Monday of September here in West Sussex and, for once, My Windy Garden is hardly windy at all. After weeks of mostly overcast, rainy weather the sun came out, so I took the camera for a slow walk around the whole garden to see what is still flowering, what is still feeding us and what has quietly reached the end of its season.
Roses having one more go, and a very big bee
I started at the flower border, where Port Sunlight has decided to release another flush of blooms. I did not expect that this late in the year and I always appreciate it. Queen of Sweden next to it has no flowers at all right now, but the roses along this border have done really well over the summer and they are all still thriving.
The whole time I was filming there was an enormous bumblebee working its way along the border. It is mostly black with an orangey red bottom, it is very loud, and I have only started seeing this kind in the garden now, at the very end of summer. It is beautiful, but it is big enough to look a bit scary, so I kept my distance. If you know your bees, please tell me in the comments what it is.
Dahlias loving the cooler weather
For the past month we have had around 20 degrees in the middle of the day with much colder evenings, nights and mornings, and the dahlias are thriving in it. That makes sense, they are late summer and autumn plants after all. My favourites are still Rhubarb and Custard and Totally Tangerine. Wizard of Oz, the little pompom, is doing really well at the back, and so is Josie. There are lots of flowers on all of them, and yes, I know they need deadheading. It has been crazy busy in the household and I just have not had the time.
Not everything is going strong. The yellow dahlia, the one I think is called Norwegian glory or something like that, is still pushing out flowers but the leaves are no longer pleasing to the eye, so it is coming out. Burlesca at the start of the border is on what I think are its last flower heads. There is one tiny new bud, but keeping that long stem for one small flower will not look nice, so I might take it down completely.
The echinacea is going too. It has been in this border for two years and I think this is the second year it has flowered. It did really well this season, it just does not look pretty anymore.
New pansies and a clematis causing chaos
You might have noticed that both hanging baskets have changed. The Supertunia Bubblegum and the white Surfinia were finished and looked completely dead, so I replaced them with pansies for a fresher look. Now that I look closely there are a few dry flowers on those as well, but it is still better than dead petunias.
The Montana clematis is causing quite a lot of chaos. It is spreading towards the window, covering the hanging basket and reaching down to the plants below and pulling on them, basically strangling them. I keep trimming it on that side and trying to force it to grow into the arch instead, and at this point it has pretty much taken over the arch. Is that good or bad? I cannot tell yet, because this is the first season it has grown so big.
On the arch, The Pilgrim has opened a few flowers, although it is not the same as the summer show. There is fresh growth though, and as I mentioned in an earlier video I want to try propagating my roses from cuttings. One long side shoot is growing the wrong way anyway, so that one is a good candidate. Gertrude Jekyll, which I was worried about, has picked up and sent out some nice long stems. They are covered in vicious thorns, so I will have to be careful, but I am going to train them over the arch to mix with The Pilgrim and the clematis. Hopefully next year that means more side shoots and more flowers.
Powdery mildew on the verbena: cut it or keep it?
I am not happy with the verbena at the moment. Up close it is completely covered in powdery mildew, and it is touching a rose on one side and the tomato plants on the other. The tomatoes seem to be coping so far, but I do not want it to spread to the roses and everything growing underneath.
Normally I leave the verbena standing until January and only then cut the stems to the ground, because it gives the border some structure at the start of winter. It has never had mildew before though. The tomatoes behind it will be coming down sooner or later, and then there would be nothing there at all, so I am torn. Let me know what you would do: cut it down now, or leave it?
At the far end of the border is my only sunflower that survived the drought. It started to flop as soon as the flower heads opened, so it is tied to the picket fence, and the petals are already wilting. Better news from the camellia next to it, which is already covered in buds for next spring.
The kitchen garden is still producing
After walking straight through a cobweb, I got to the kitchen garden. It is the end of September and there are still so many tomatoes on those plants. I am honestly shocked by how productive they have been. I had also been thinking about pulling out the cucumber plants after I took that gigantic one off the top of the trellis in the last video, but I left them in, and when I came to pick tomatoes a couple of days ago there were new cucumbers. So they are still going, and I found one older one that I had completely forgotten to pick.
An update on the Atomic chilli. I did not manage to find a straightforward answer on when it is ripe, and the label shows both red and a purple, almost black fruit. Some are turning red now. My husband picked a few of the dark ones and says they are delicious, with just the right amount of kick without killing him. My guess is that the dark ones are not fully ripe and the red ones will be hotter. I am no chilli expert, but he is happy with the flavour and that is all I need.
The bell peppers are staying where they are. I had a little dig under one of the pots and the roots have gone through into the border, so I am not going to disturb them by moving them into the greenhouse. They can carry on for as long as the weather lets them.
The beans are gone. One dark, rainy late afternoon I had the urge to rip things out, and the beans went. They were finished anyway, and the pods I did not pick in time had dried on the plants, so I saved seeds from them. Those were the last of my packet, so that is one thing I will not have to buy next year. I have saved seeds from the Small Sugar pumpkin as well.
The old potato bed is still empty. I have not had time to plant the seedlings I bought and I hate watching them slowly go to waste. Some do not look good at all, but maybe the cabbages and the salads can still be saved. I just have to come out one afternoon and do it. The parsnips and carrots are doing okay, there are beetroots growing behind the carrots, and the little greenhouse is only holding the cut down tomato stems, which are sprouting random side shoots and will be cleared out.
Pears in, apples lost: the tree border
The Conference pear gave us a good harvest this year. One pear dropped to the ground, so I told my husband it was time to pick them before we lost the lot. We now have quite a lot and they are very tasty. He left two on the tree because a spider was living there and it freaked him out, so I will cut those down myself.
Under the trees the cyclamen have started flowering, which seems far too early for the end of September. Under the Gala apple, the jasmine I removed at the start of summer keeps sending up new stems, and I keep pulling them out. The Gala is the biggest tree in our garden, and as you know from earlier videos we lost all of its apples. They were falling from late July and right through August, diseased and full of bugs, so at the end of August we took the rest down to stop whatever it was from spreading. The James Grieve had no apples at all this season, but it looks very healthy, so hopefully next year.
The autumn colour has started. The acer is slowly turning orange at the top, with the top stems going red, and the dwarf ornamental cherry Royal Burgundy looks like it is on fire. The light was on the wrong side when I filmed, and they look even better in the afternoon sun. The olive tree has picked up since the rain came back. It was not at all happy in the summer.
Pots that struggled through the summer
The shrubs and trees in pots are not looking very graceful. The Generous Gardener rose is still alive. The magnolia is not happy at all, and I only hope it has survived this very difficult summer. Our second dwarf ornamental cherry, Kanzan, normally turns orangey red across its top leaves in autumn, but we will not see that this year. It lost most of those leaves to the drought and to some kind of rusty spotting that I cannot identify. The tree itself is alive and already making new shoots for next year, so I am hopeful.
The hydrangea in the pot is doing exactly what I told you it would. The flower heads open white, turn lime green over the summer and now, in autumn, the edges of the petals are taking on a powdery pink. It is very beautiful. And behind it the azaleas, which dried out completely in the summer, are putting out new leaves, so they are still alive. Please ignore the cobwebs. The spiders are relentless at this point in the season and they build everywhere they can.
A discount code and a first birthday
After the last video, where I unpacked the gloves that CoolJobSafety kindly sent me, they asked if I would like to join their affiliate programme, and I was very happy to. So there is now a code for anyone who watches my videos: AGA10 gives you 10% off your whole basket in the CoolJobSafety online store. To be clear, it is an affiliate code, so I receive a commission on qualifying purchases, at no extra cost to you.
And one more thing. On 5 October 2026 it will be a full year since I uploaded my very first video. I do not know where the time went. Should we celebrate our first anniversary, and how? If you have ideas, leave them in the comments and we will see what we can do. Thank you to everyone who has subscribed, watched and followed this gardening journey with me. I appreciate you so much.
In this video
- Port Sunlight flowering again and a huge black bumblebee with an orange red tail
- Rhubarb and Custard, Totally Tangerine, Wizard of Oz and Josie dahlias at their best
- Pansies in the hanging baskets and a Montana clematis taking over the arch
- Powdery mildew on the verbena: cut it down now or keep the winter structure?
- Tomatoes and cucumbers still cropping in the 15m2 kitchen garden at the end of September
- An Atomic chilli verdict, bell peppers staying put and bean seeds saved
- Conference pears picked, cyclamen flowering early and the acer starting to turn
- Hydrangea petals going from lime green to pink, and azaleas coming back to life
- A CoolJobSafety discount code and the channel's first birthday on 5 October
So that is my end of September garden tour. It clouded over more and more while I was filming, with rain expected every day this week, so I am glad I caught the sunshine while it lasted. If you know what that bee is, or have an opinion on the verbena, please tell me in the comments. Thank you so much for watching, and I will see you in the next one.
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