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Give your garden a seasonal lift with these colourful bedding favourites
Autumn bedding plants are the secret to keeping colour alive in your garden long after the sun fades. Fast-growing, low-maintenance, and bursting with vibrant blooms, they’ll refresh your borders, pots, and hanging baskets in no time.
The best time to plant autumn bedding is between August and October. Getting them in the ground before the first frosts arrive gives roots time to settle, guaranteeing a bright display that lasts through autumn and well into winter. These plants establish quickly — within a few weeks, they’ll be rooted and ready to bloom, adding a much-needed splash of colour just when your garden starts to look bare.
Discover five of the best varieties to plant in your garden right now.
'Cyclamen are a true autumn star,' begins Emma Fell, head of horticulture at Hillier Garden Centres. 'Their elegant, upswept petals come in rich shades of pink, red and white, often paired with beautifully marbled foliage. They're perfect for brightening up containers or adding seasonal flair to a doorstep display.
'Cyclamen thrive in cooler temperatures and cope well with shorter days, making them a reliable choice for long-lasting autumn interest.'
Compact and colourful, cyclamen add elegance to pots, window boxes and sheltered borders, and pair beautifully with ivy, heather or ornamental grasses.
While cyclamen will happily sit outside in a sheltered spot, they must be brought under cover once frost is forecast. Move pots to a cool, bright place indoors – such as a porch, windowsill or unheated conservatory.
Pansies deliver long-lasting colour to beds, baskets and containers, brightening up even the dullest days.
'Pansies are a much-loved classic for a reason. With their bold, cheerful faces in a rainbow of colours, they provide instant impact,' says Emma. 'They’re also remarkably hardy – pansies can withstand cold, wet conditions and will often keep flowering well into the winter months.
'For best results, keep deadheading spent blooms to encourage fresh flushes of colour.'
For maximum resilience, opt for winter-flowering varieties and combine complementary shades to create cheerful contrast on grey, wintry days.
Delicate yet durable, violas are a gardener’s go-to for continuous colour, perfect for brightening up even the smallest spaces.
'Closely related to pansies, violas offer slightly smaller, daintier flowers but often in even greater abundance. They're exceptionally hardy and will carry on flowering for months, adding reliable pops of colour to borders, hanging baskets and pots,' explains Emma. 'Violas are also wonderfully versatile. Pairing beautifully with other seasonal plants such as ornamental grasses or trailing ivy.'
A top autumn bedding plant pick from the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) is Heuchera ‘Sugar Plum’. With bright pink leaves that provide long-lasting colour, it offers a useful contrast to other plants, particularly grasses.
The RHS notes that it is a hardy perennial which can be re-used in the garden as a permanent plant after being used as bedding.
Another autumn bedding plant recommended by the RHS is hardy plumbago (Ceratostigma plumbaginoides), which the garden charity describes as 'a reliable performer for a sunny spot, with sky-blue flowers blooming for weeks on end in September and October'.
Much loved by pollinating insects, its leaves also develop attractive wine-coloured tints as the season progresses.
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