Autumn colours at their best at Borde Hill Garden

But now, as summer gives way to autumn, it is an ideal time to visit to admire the colours of the many mature and award-winning trees.

Many are laden with fruits and berries which gently turn to their autumnal colours, along with their leaves.

The garden’s autumn border is now also at its best, bursting with colourful dahlias, salvias, Michaelmas daisies and other late-flowering perennials.

The dahlias will keep blooming until the first frosts and some varieties, such as the cactus dahlia, can grow to a magnificent two metres.

Borde Hill head of horticulture Harry Baldwin has been busy recently planting some New Horizon elm trees as part of the Queen’s Green Canopy project.

New Horizon are resistant to Dutch elm disease and good at coping with hot summers such as we have experienced this year.

"Now is an ideal time of year to plant trees,” says Harry.

Beyond the garden lies 200 acres of parkland and woodland set within the High Weald and an ideal vantage point to sit and admire the landscape is Borde Hill’s tranquil Italian garden – just one of many of the garden’s ‘outdoor rooms.’

When Borde Hill House was built in 1598, the surrounding landscape was fields with hedgerows and tree-lined boundaries.

By the mid 1700s the field margins had mostly been removed and the parkland came into being.

Colonel Stephenson Clarke sponsored the great plant hunters to gather trees, shrubs and perennial plants from around the world.

Many of the specimens were planted in the garden and woodlands and the finer specimens were placed as landscape trees in the parkland to provide views and diversity.

The garden is open daily from 10am-5pm until November 13.