A well-designed garden always has lots of bulbs involved and now is the time to buy them. There are hardly any areas of a garden that bulbs can’t be planted. You can plant bulbs between shrubs or herbaceous plants, in rock gardens or in the lawn. Spring-flowering bulbs can be planted in drifts, just as they might in the wild, or naturalized in patches among the grasses of the lawn. Whatever the size of your garden, this autumn try planting up a few containers with different varieties of bulb. By growing bulbs in pots, you can provide temporary colour where they can easily be substituted when they are past their best. For an indoor floral display at Christmas, plant some forced hyacinth bulbs specially prepared to flower at Christmas. If you can’t find those, don’t worry; ordinary hyacinths are fine, but will just take a bit longer to flower.
This is an excellent time to buy or make a compost bin for all the autumn debris. You can then look forward to adding all that organic matter to the borders to maintain the garden in good heart. Growing plants intensively, as we tend to do, means that a lot of goodness is taken out of the earth in a relatively small area. It is therefore essential to put something back in order to get the best out of the plants. Making your own compost is an ideal way of doing this. Although there are plenty of bins to buy, I have always found that the best ones are the homemade variety. Remember to use a good mix of different materials to make the best compost. If you grow your own vegetables those alone will generate plenty of material. Don’t use woody stems or diseased leaves, as your compost bin probably won’t get to a high enough temperature now to break these down.