» Coral-bark maple

Acer palmatum ‘Sango-kaku’ earns its keep with gorgeous autumn foliage and stunning winter bark.

One of my priorities with the new garden is to make it a truly glorious sight in autumn. As you know, I love autumn more than any other season. And I also don’t like grey winter days and dark winter afternoons, so I really must make autumn and winter as beautiful as possible in my garden so that I cannot help but be cheered.

One of the new plants that’s going a long way to realising this is my coral-bark maple, Acer palmatum ‘Sango-kaku’, which is a beautiful little tree. It arrived this week from Gardening Express, and will form part of a special autumn border along one side of the plot. It has gorgeous foliage:

Just look at all those colours in one leaf!

Those leaves fade to gold, and then fall. But even then, the coral-bark maple earns its keep by living up to its name. Its bark isn’t that different to a dogwood, and therefore this is a winter plant as well as an autumn one.