Spring gets most of the attention in gardening, but if I had to choose when to plant a garden, I'd often choose autumn.
There's something slightly odd about the way we traditionally think about gardening. The first warm weekend in spring arrives, garden centres fill up, and suddenly everybody wants to plant their garden.
I understand why. Plants are coming into growth, flowers are appearing and after a long winter we all want to get outside again.
But from the plant's point of view, autumn can make considerably more sense.
We're Planting Roots, Not Just Plants
When we plant a tree, shrub or perennial, the bit we can see is only half the story.
What I'm really interested in initially is what's happening underground.
A plant needs to establish a healthy root system before it can properly support everything we expect it to do above ground. Planting in autumn gives it an opportunity to start doing exactly that.
The soil is still relatively warm from summer, but the air temperature is falling. We generally have more rainfall and there's far less pressure on a newly planted tree or shrub than there would be during a hot, dry spell in late spring or summer.
It can quietly get on with establishing itself.
Then, when spring eventually arrives, it isn't starting completely from scratch.
Autumn Planting Is Particularly Important for Trees
I have a particular love of trees and I think almost every garden benefits from having them.
They give a garden scale, structure and maturity in a way very few other plants can.
But planting a tree isn't just about digging a hole large enough to fit the rootball.
We have to think about the soil, drainage, the eventual size of the tree, prevailing winds, staking, irrigation and – something that's surprisingly easy to overlook – whether it's actually the right tree for that particular garden.
Autumn gives us an excellent planting window for many trees.
Once the leaves have fallen from deciduous trees, the demand for water through the canopy reduces dramatically, while the roots can continue establishing whenever soil conditions are suitable.
For a tree that's hopefully going to be part of a garden for the next 30, 40 or perhaps 100 years, giving it the best possible start seems worthwhile.
The Same Applies to Hedging
Autumn also marks the beginning of one of my favourite periods of the landscaping year: bare-root and root-balled planting season.
There are plants that suddenly become practical to use on a much larger scale.
A long native hedge, for example, can contain hundreds of plants. Hawthorn, field maple, hazel, blackthorn and other native species can create something completely different from a conventional evergreen boundary.
It changes through the seasons, provides flowers and berries and creates habitat for wildlife.
And it gets better as it gets older.
That's something I think we sometimes forget when designing gardens.
Not everything needs to look finished immediately.
A Garden Should Improve With Age
We're surrounded by images of gardens photographed immediately after completion.
I understand that – we photograph our own gardens too.
But the gardens I really enjoy seeing are the ones we've been able to return to several years later.
Plants have started knitting together.
Trees have developed character.
Grasses have softened the edges of paving.
Ground-cover plants have found their way into little gaps that we probably didn't deliberately design for them.
The garden starts looking less like something we've built and more like somewhere that has always belonged there.
Autumn planting is part of that longer-term thinking.
We Also Need to Think Differently About Water
The way we design planting is changing.
We increasingly have to think about gardens coping with periods of very wet weather followed by extended periods when rainfall can be limited.
In the North West, it's tempting to think that water shortage isn't something we need to worry about.
It is.
A newly planted garden can require a considerable amount of water, particularly during its first couple of growing seasons.
That's another reason autumn planting can be useful. We're working with the seasons rather than fighting against them.
It doesn't remove the need for proper watering – particularly with specimen trees – but it can reduce some of the stress placed on newly installed planting.
And increasingly, we're thinking about where the water itself comes from.
Can rainfall be retained within the garden?
Can we improve the soil so it holds moisture better?
Do we need irrigation?
Can water from buildings be captured rather than simply sent into a drain?
These aren't particularly glamorous parts of garden design, but they increasingly matter.
Choosing Plants for the Garden, Not the Photograph
There's another advantage to thinking about planting in autumn.
It makes you look at plants differently.
Go to a garden centre in May and it's incredibly easy to buy whatever happens to be flowering beautifully that weekend.
Do that with an entire garden and you can accidentally create something that looks fantastic for three weeks of the year.
When we're designing planting, we're thinking about the other 49 weeks as well.
What does the bark look like in January?
Does the foliage colour change in October?
Will the seed heads remain through winter?
Is it evergreen?
Will it produce berries?
What happens when frost catches it?
Some of my favourite plants aren't necessarily the most spectacular when they're flowering.
They're the plants that contribute something to the garden for months rather than weeks.
Don't Be Too Quick to Tidy the Garden
Autumn also isn't necessarily the time to cut everything down.
I like seeing gardens change.
The faded flower heads of perennials, the seed heads on grasses and the silhouettes of plants that have finished flowering can be every bit as important as summer flowers.
Then frost arrives and changes everything again.
There are obviously plants that need cutting back and gardens that require tidying, but there's a balance.
Sometimes the best thing you can do is leave something alone.
The insects might appreciate it too.
Autumn Isn't the End of the Gardening Year
Perhaps that's the biggest misconception.
Autumn often feels like we're putting the garden to bed.
For me, it's almost the opposite.
It's one of the points in the year when we're thinking most about what happens next.
We're planting trees that might eventually become the dominant feature of a garden. We're planting hedges that will form boundaries for decades. We're dividing perennials, planting bulbs and thinking about what the garden will look like next spring – and the spring after that.
A good garden is never really finished.
It grows, changes and occasionally does things we didn't expect.
And that's probably why I still find plants so interesting.
We can design the garden.
But ultimately, nature gets a say in what happens next.