Plants with the Most Spectacular Autumn Colours
Normally when people talk about autumn colour, they mention the Fraxinus ‘Claret Ash’ Tree or Liriodendron ‘Tulip Tree’. They do have incredible autumn colours, only problem is they grow to about 8-12 metres tall. This would practically overtake a front or backyard of a normal suburban house and likely destroy the courtyard of a unit. A lot of people have smaller spaces, they’re working with balconies, pots, tiny garden beds, courtyards, limited front yard space, and so on. But this doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy the brilliance of autumn.
These are the plants that you need to create a garden that is set alight with scarlets, golds, ambers and all those fiery shades during the months of autumn.
13 of the Most Spectacular Autumn Plant Colours
Acer palmatum ‘Japanese Maple’
Also known as your Plain Japanese Maple, this is a great option for those who want a Japanese Maple, but don’t want to spend too much money on it. But this doesn’t mean it’s lacking when it comes to beauty. The fine foliage transforms into a striking red-pink shade that would stop anyone in their tracks to admire. When I was a kid, I actually used to cut big bunches of it and sell them on the side of the road, and people pulled up and bought it like crazy. I don’t know if that would still happen nowadays… but anyways, the great thing about your Japanese Maple is they’ve probably got one of the safest root systems of any plant.
So you can plant them close to the house or in a little courtyard and having nothing to worry about. They’re very versatile – you can cloud prune them, or you can bonsai them. They’re also a tree you can keep in a pot for years, as long as you properly take care of it. Water and fertilise it enough, with some Osmocote or Dolomite Lime, or it’s going to turn brown by the end of the season. A little tip, if you’re getting early autumn colour then this is actually not a good thing. It’s a sign of stress, dryness and perhaps a lack of nutrients. So just make sure you’re taking care of your Japanese Maple, and it will reward you with brilliant autumn colour.
Acer ‘Senkaki/Coral Bark’ Japanese Maple
Of course I’m going to include another Japanese Maple – they’re just too gorgeous in the autumn to not. In perfect conditions they only end up as a four-metre tree, and with a bit of a trim you can keep it down to two and half or three metres. I often tell people to Google Senkaki Maple, so go ahead and do it. A little bit confused? You’ve probably gotten a page of entirely different coloured foliage and you’re thinking whether it’s all the same tree, it is.
Basically Senkaki Maples move through a wide range of hues throughout the year. In winter they’re bare, with that crimson bark on display. In springtime, the softest green foliage comes through, where the crimson branches just peek through. Towards summer you start to get dashes of pink and orange tones that expand as summer goes on. Then by the end of summer and turn of autumn, you have an iridescent gold, with some touches of pink and orange. In the final stages of autumn you get red hues, before the leaves drop. Just magical. This is a tree that is going to provide delight and interest year-round. They also go with almost any style; modern, classical, Japanese, they always look incredible. So if you’ve got a tiny area with room for only one tree – then hands down you have to pick a Senkaki.
Cotinus ‘Grace’ Smoke Bush
Smoke Bushes
are fabulous plants with a beautiful reddish/purple foliage most of the time. Then in autumn it shifts to orange, red and yellow shades. They love a hot sunny spot and with a bit of a trim can be kept down to one and half metres tall, or grown up to around two and half/ three metres tall. I wouldn’t put them in a pot, rather plant them in the garden bed. They’re a lovely thick bush that also flowers in summer. The flowers are a smoky grey and contrast beautifully with the foliage. What’s great about the Smoke Bush and Senkaki is that they’re not boring all year with only a show of colour in autumn. They give your garden colour for nine months and then have an amazing crescendo of autumn colour too.
Prunus ‘Kojo No Mai’ Ornamental Cherry
Kojo No Mai has a curly kind of foliage with beautiful tiny pink-white blossoms during the springtime. It’s grafted up on a standard and you can buy it as a low standard or a tall standard. It’s quite a compact plant that you can grow in a pot, making sure to water and fertilise it well. But you can also grow it in the garden. It looks beautiful year-round, in the summer it has green pine foliage and blossoms, in winter is has interesting curly branches, then come autumn you get magnificent burgundy autumn colour.
Berberis ‘Japanese Barberry’ Purple
There are all different types of Berberis with different autumn colours, but today I’m going to talk about the Purple one. You can plant it as a hedge and trim it into a square, or you can trim it into a ball. The Purple Berberis is the most common and popular of the Berberis. As you come into autumn it will be this bright purple that shifts into shades of orange, yellow and red. With a trim you can keep it under a metre, or let it grow to its full height of about two metres.
You can mass plant it for a beautiful splash of colour in your garden, or even plant different types of Berberis and have a wide array of shades. For example there is the Berberis ‘Little Favourite’ Barberry that has burgundy purple foliage which changes to a bright red and orange in autumn, with cream flowers during the springtime. I’ve never used them as a pot plant, but I don’t see why you couldn’t, as they’re a hearty and easy to grow plant.
Cornus florida ‘White Dogwood’
This is the Dogwood that most people know, with its beautiful white flowers and lovely red autumn colour. What’s great about White Dogwood is that it’s quite an exotic looking plant and its autumn colour is long-lasting. You don’t expect a plant that looks so incredible in the summer, with its riot of intricate flowers, to then give you such fabulous autumn colour. Your Dogwood is an understory tree, which means that it naturally grows in the forest underneath other trees. So if you have some great big trees or a two-story house towering over your place, then the White Dogwood will thrive in that shady spot. Just make sure you give it loose soil, bit of water and a bit of fertilizer.
Crepe Myrtle
Similar to the Senkaki maple, if there was only room for one tree than the Crepe Myrtle is a great option. Your first thought of the Crepe Myrtle is likely the beautiful pink-white flowers, which is quite magnificent. But not long after the flowering is finished, you get the most vibrant autumn colours that lingers for weeks. Some autumn colours are beautiful but fleeting, here today and then gone a few days later. But with the Crepe Myrtle, the autumn colour goes on and on. The different varieties of Crepe Myrtle all have slightly different shades. The Sioux is one of my favourites for its beautiful soft pink flowers and smaller size. Some Crepe Myrtles will grow to four or five metres, but Sioux doesn’t get much bigger than three metres. With a bit of pruning you can easily keep it to one or two metres.
Another great feature is that once they’ve matured, they get this beautiful pattern on their bark. With some flowering trees they’re only pretty in the springtime and boring for the rest of the year, but the Crepe Myrtle provides excitement year-round. If you do have the space, Crepe Myrtles are fantastic mass planted up a driveway or avenue, but even if you just have room for one tree, it’s still going to look fantastic. With beautiful bark, exquisite flowers, and brilliant autumn colours, the Crepe Myrtle really earns its keep as an ornamental tree.
Blueberry Bush
I never thought that the Blueberry Bush had good autumn colour until Carl, a great nurseryman, brought one of them. This was back when I had a nursery in Emerald, and he would grow a few plants for me. Carl brought in this beautiful bush, about half a metre tall and half a metre wide, and it had the most beautiful autumn colour. I asked him what it was, and he told me it was a Blueberry Bush. I was quite surprised. You can grow it in a pot, or a little corner of the garden, and it’s going to give you cute flowers then fantastic autumn colour. Not to mention you’re also getting blueberries!
Hydrangea quercifolia ‘Oakleaf’
This is one of the most underrated plants for autumn colour. In spring and all throughout summer you have these fantastic flowers. But then with other types of hydrangeas, pretty much straight after Mother’s Day, the leaves would turn rotten and fall off. It would look like something from a horror movie. But your Oakleaf has intense autumn colour, a deep purple shade, and the leaves don’t drop off. They stay there until new bright leaves come in around middle of September, then you have this period of time where green leaves are appearing amongst purple leaves, creating a kaleidoscope of colour. Also compared to other hydrangeas it’s a bit lower and wider growing. They’re my favourite hydrangea because come winter, they don’t shapeshift into a creature from a horror film.
Viburnum ‘Snowball Bush’
A few decades ago these were the most popular bush in Melbourne and it’s easy to see why. With those clusters of creamy white blossoms, they truly look like snowballs or even clouds, covering the bush. Back then I never noticed how nice their autumn colour is, but I found a patch of them in the nursery today and they look incredible. You’re probably noticing that a lot of the plants on this list aren’t just great for their autumn colour, but rather give you beauty in so many other ways too. It’s because you don’t plant a garden just for one season, you plant a garden to give you eternal wonder and delight. Surprisingly, the Snowball Bush isn’t as common nowadays, so perhaps a resurgence like the ornamental grass is due (stay tuned for an article on ornamental grasses coming soon). They’re super compact so perfect for a tight space. The foliage starts out as a bright green, then with autumn it changes to a gorgeous reddish orange. Even the flowers themselves do some colour-shifting, beginning as an apple-green, morphing to white, and eventually fading to a rosy colour.
Acer ‘Shaina’ Japanese Maple
Look, we could do an entire list on Japanese Maples, but I’m trying to be very selective with which ones I put here, because not everyone wants a Japanese Maple. But the Shaina is really a standout because it’s a miniature Japanese Maple that is perfect for people tight on space. Shaina has very fine leaves and dense foliage which add to the intensity of its red colouring. It’s so small you can have it in a pot and keep it there forever. If you never trimmed it, Shaina would probably end up two metres tall in 10 or 15 years, but if you trimmed it a little bit you could easily keep it a metre tall.
Acer saccharum ‘Sugar’ Maple
The ‘Sugar’ Maple is one of my all-time favourite plants for autumn colour, so I wanted to include this too, however this is quite a large tree. In autumn it is a bright yellow with more subtle tones of orange, pink and red. It almost looks like it is glowing with soft flames. Because of this, it’s typically overlooked, but I love the subtlety.
Parthenocissus ‘Boston Ivy’
The autumn colour of Boston Ivy is unbelievable, not to mention how beautiful and luscious it looks in the summer. Use the right soil, bit of water and fertiliser, and keep it trimmed for the best look. Boston Ivy is a climber so it can really elevate a wall, fence, or the side of the house. Then in autumn the dark green foliage will turn crimson, standing out dramatically against the rest of your landscape.
So there are some of the plants with the most brilliant autumn colour. Of course, this list isn’t exhaustive, but I wanted to make this for those who want autumn colour, but are completely overwhelmed by all the choices. You’ve probably noticed here in Melbourne that summer is well and truly gone, the days are getting colder, and the sun is setting sooner. Autumn is officially here. Which means there is no better time to come down to Hello Hello and see for yourself the incredible autumn colour on these plants.
May your autumn be filled with fiery hues,
Chris
Feeling inspired to create your own garden, but want some expert advice? Try our one-on-one garden design service with Chris. Together you’ll come up with a selection of plants along with a layout plan that gives you the look you want, as well as being suitable for your local soil and conditions.
The 
There are people who have never owned indoor plants and all of a sudden, they want to have an indoor plant. They’ve just rented a house or whatever, and they want to have a couple of indoor plants and they’re nervous. Indoor plants look expensive to them, they look like they’re fragile and they don’t know which ones to start out with. So they are what I would call beginners when it comes to indoor plants.
Now to start off, for the first plant, I’ve chosen a modern version of the old 
And remember when it comes to choosing which plants, just head to our 
They had beautiful, 
Now you can get the Convolvulus in a form that has both blue and white flowers on the same bush. You can also get it with white flowers and you can get it with beautiful blue flowers each on separate bushes. And it’s one of the longest flowering plants around. It’s one that I’ll often plant underneath, say 
So like many of the plants I’ve mentioned for summer colour, you can use them to pick out those bare spots in your garden, and just plant some of them to give you splashes of colour here and there. One thing that not a lot of people think to do, is to underplant them. If you have something that has bare patches underneath it like a tree or a shrub, you can plant a lot of these summer colour plants below them and just add so much more colour to your garden. Or you can put some in hanging baskets or give them a place to climb in your garden. They are really cheap many of them.
Something like the 
Another problem people might have with their flowering plants is aphids. Now these are one of the easiest things in the world to get rid of. Now if you’ve got kids and pets and you don’t want to put anything really toxic on your garden, I find that a bit of pyrethrum and a bit of dishwashing detergent mixed together and sprayed on your flowering plants that have Aphids will work wonders. Spray it once on a warm sunny day and then 48 hours later, do it again to get the next hatching of Aphids coming out and they will be done too. This mixture doesn’t have a residual poison and it’ll clean them up for good.
Now if you have clay soil, it’s nowhere near as bad as what some people reckon for flowering plants. Clay soil is millions of years old and it has got lots of nutrients in it. But the main problem with your clay soil is the clay particles in it are all squashed tight together. Now plant roots need water and oxygen and they both can’t move well through heavy clay soil. So when planting your flowering plants in a clay soil, dig a nice big hole, much bigger than you probably think and mix your 
Now don’t forget when you are planting your colourful flowering plants in baskets and pots and so on, you can mix up different colours in the same basket or pot and that makes for some fun and interest.
But of course, you can do it the other way and decide what plant you want and then find a pot that suits it and the place you’re going to put it.
But that’s not all, I will also ask you, why are you wanting to put something there? Do you want something big and bushy to block off the neighbours? Or do you want something colourful that makes a statement? Or do you have a beautiful modern building and you want something that leaps out at you and makes a modern statement.
Now just because you might decide to get a big feature pot doesn’t mean you need to put a big plant in it, because you might feel a little overwhelmed or enclosed by that big plant and it can be hard to get a bit plant that’s exciting. But what you might do with a big pot, is put 3 or even 4 different plants in it, with say some pebbles and something that overhangs the front like a 
Generally I recommend to people don’t end up with lots and lots of pots. Just put the minimum number of pots on your balcony. But go big and put some different plants in them. So for example put one big featured plant in your big pot then you can put some ground cover type plants below it, that will cascade over the sides of the big pot. If your big pot is in the shade you could put a beautiful fern or palm with some baby tears underneath. If your big pot is somewhere sunny, you could put some silver dichondra or succulent ground covers underneath.
The sure signs that your plant needs water is it will start to drop a few leaves and the other leaves will start to shrivel and wilt. The key to helping your pot plant get enough water is to ensure it’s in a big enough pot. Really small pots empty out of water very quickly. Now a good potting mix also holds water well, so that’s important too. With a good potting mix and a nice big pot, your plant can draw up as much water as it needs.
Now a lot of people believe you have to re-pot your plants every year or two. That’s not really true. You might need to top up the 
So there you have it. A whole range of pots to choose from and some tips on how to make sure the plants you put in the pots look fabulous and thrive.
If you’ve ever dug up a big, fully grown Japanese Maple, you might be surprised to see how small their root systems are compared to other trees. Because they don’t have an overly large root system, you can plant them in courtyards or other small spaces, really quite close to buildings.
One of the popular varieties of 
Another popular variety is the 
It can be quite a lot of work to graft them and it can be very difficult. But doing this can produce the exact shape and style of plant the grafter wanted. For example, they might do it to create a very, very broad head on one or to graft an older head onto a younger stem. This kind of skill takes years to develop and practice. So when you see a Japanese Maple at a nursery for several hundred dollars remember it might be anywhere between 8 – 10 years old. And it would have taken a lot of work and time in grafting and care to get the plant looking like it does when you see it in the nursery.
If you really want a spectacular show in Autumn you can’t go past the 
Another issue in Melbourne is that we have a lot of hard clay soil. If you dig a hole for your Japanese Maple that is only the size of the pot it was in and plant it, it won’t do well because the roots are not overly aggressive or tough and they can’t spread through the clay. In hot windy weather they burn and shrivel.
So the secret is more in how you plant it than where you plant it. Ideally, dig a nice big, very wide hole. Fill it with a good quality 
Of course, if you get a really hot spell the other secret is to just water it well. Daily is fine in summer, even twice a day on a real scorcher. With enough water they’ll survive the sun and hot winds. If you are still worried you can always use a soil 
So this is almost all you ever needed to know about Japanese Maples in one article. If you are still unsure about which variety to choose for your garden or exactly where to plant which one, don’t forget we have a 
They have it near the drive-in bottle shop in a narrow little garden bed that’s a bit shady and it’s the perfect spot for it. It grows lovely and lush and won’t get too big, only needs a little bit of trim now and then.
It’s beautiful, it’s green and lush, it’s very happy in its little shady corner but again it contrasts beautifully with all the plum coloured 
They look like the old-style metal tractor seats from say the 1940s and 50s. The ones that were set on a big steel spring. Now these plants love a shady spot too. They get this beautiful, big lush foliage on them all year round and then in late spring you get this lovely, yellow, daisy-like flower that blooms with a sort of spidery like nature.
Underneath this particular Tractor Seat Plant, they’ve used a little 
Now in these planter boxes they will have to keep it well watered, which they clearly do. So if you’ve got a little patio or a balcony or somewhere you want to create some privacy then using long narrow planter boxes just like they have here, with Ficus Flash in them, can create a narrow but thick privacy hedge or screen.
Moon Bay Nandina are a really good hardy plant. They don’t need much water and don’t need really much of anything. They are really low maintenance, a bit of weeding sometimes. They are really lush, beautiful, hardy plants. What I love is that when they are mass planted like they are at this hotel you could just walk through them and they’re lovely and soft. I think they’re fabulous. All year round they’re bright green with red tips on them, but in winter they turn an absolutely brilliant red.
Now, whether you’ve got a commercial garden you need help with or a garden for your home, then please take advantage of our 
You’ll also find 
Don’t miss our Overflow Area. This is where we display some of the best bargains we have. Sometimes we find a great deal on plants and we might buy 500 or 1000 of them. Or if we think the industry is going to run short on something for an upcoming season we buy up big to make sure our customers don’t miss out. 
If you pine for conifers you will love this section. We have 
Our famous “bare-rooted” area is where we sell plants out of their pots with their roots exposed and free of soil. We can only do this with plants during their dormant stage so it only happens for a limited time each year.
Our 
