grasses | Cardesque Garden

It is the meteorological beginning of autumn today and it certainly feels it. Sun, rain, a little chillier and the colours are starting to change in the garden. Some leaves have been turning a bit earlier this year possibly due to the shortage of rain during the spring and summer and the high temperatures. I will be planting the tree I bought a few weeks ago in the stumpery now that we are getting more rain and I still need to find the amelanchier trees that I wanted for other areas in the garden. I will need to move a few plants around on the patio because all the ones that like the sunshine are now going to get waterlogged if I don’t.

Harry found something in the garden and brought it in to me to see if I knew what this weird brown squirmy thing was and I was so pleased to see it was an elephant hawk moth caterpillar (Deilephila elepenor). I have seen plenty in photos but never in real life. When they are moving around you can see their heads properly but when they think they are under attack they tuck their heads under and show off their markings that look like huge eyes. They are pretty big caterpillars and they turn into amazing pink and buff coloured moths.

Large brown elephant hawk moth caterpillar moth markings that look like eyes. Moving across paving slabs. — Deilephila elepenor (elephant hawk moth caterpillar).

Large brown elephant hawk moth caterpillar half curled up showing defence 'eye' markings. — Deilephila elpenor (elephant hawk moth caterpillar) showing ‘eye’ markings.

I am still doing slug patrols in the mornings to keep the numbers of the very large Spanish slugs down. I hardly ever see our small grey native slugs except on the patio. I do still get a lot of the green or yellow cellar slugs and they are goodies so I am happy about that. I even found a couple having a rest inside my bird feeder. I have a couple that come down the house wall around lunch time from the rhones and they then go into the house vent at the bottom of the wall. Later on they make their way back up the wall to the rhones again.

Green/yellow cellar slugs resting under the top of a birdfeeder. — Slugs resting in the top of birdfeeder.

In flower now: the roses have plenty of flowers and buds, Japanese anemones, verbena, persicaria, pink heather, cyclamen, weigela, a few sporadic flowers on hardy geranium, erigeron, fuchsia, selinum and a couple of grasses (miscanthus and hakonechloa). Even some hellebores have started to flower. The hakonechloa on the patio has some purple lines through the leaves and the seed-heads are slightly purple tinge that goes nicely with the purple flowers on the hellebore beside it in pots on the patio. The white persicaria in the stumpery doesn’t have big showy flowers but it brightens up the shadier part of the stumpery and shows up well against the dark green shrubs like the Sarcococca.

Golden grass alongside a purple flowered hellebore. — Hakonechloa beside double purple hellebore on the patio.

Pink heather with a bee. — Self seeded pink heather.

View in a shady garden corner with golden acer, white persicaria flowers against dark green shrub. — Shady corner in the stumpery.

view of the garden at the end of August 2026 showing perennials and shrubs. — Beginning of September 2026.

Pink, and white Japanese anemones besise deep purple roses. — Middle bed September 2026.

In the conservatory I have started watering the succulents like the lithops, which were starting to look very wrinkled, and now one of the smallest ones is just coming into flower. I am still learning about these and trying not to over water my succulents. They apparently want watered during the autumn and spring, but not through the winter, and very sparingly through summer if at all. The leaves don’t look great just now but once they have flowered, new leaves will form and push up in between these leaves using up the nutrients and water from the old leaves which will eventually shrivel and die.

Green lithops with white flowers about to open. — Lithop flowers about to open.

For now I will be just dead-heading and tidying some plants in between rain showers and trying to source my amelanchier trees.

…rushes are round, and grasses have knees that bend down to the ground.’ There are other versions of this wee ditty that I was reminded of the other day and as usual there are the odd exceptions to that rule. It may not have been the best day to take photographs of my garden grasses as it was a bit breezy. Hey ho. Grasses can really tie a garden together and make it all look very natural and can soften areas. Eve the lightest breeze brings movement and gentle sound to the garden. I can’t identify half the grasses I have but I try to take care to chop off the seed heads before they spread over the rest of the garden. Especially the ones covering the logs in my woodland area. The Briza media (quaking grass) is on the patio and the flowers turn a lovely straw colour and gently nod in the slightest breeze. The Carex pendula I have in pots in various places, some shady and some sunny and it copes well everywhere. There is a variety of grasses in and around the pond. In the chimney pot in the background is a Carex comans Bronze which will hang down over the edges of the pot. There is some kind of Juncus (rush) on the right hand side of the pond in the run-off boggy area, spouting up in the middle of the Acorus Ogori (Golden Japanese rush. In the pond is Eleocharis (hair grass) and Eriophorum Angustifolium – may also be know as Scirpus I think (cotton grass or bog cotton). And I have no idea what the grasses are on the log.