Summer bedding will look tired and leggy, so changing it over now will ensure some cheerful colour in the long cold months and well into spring. Doing it now will also mean we avoid having to brave doing it when the temperature plummets and it also gives the plants a chance to settle in before the weather worsens!

There are quite a few bedding plants that will bloom and thrive through the autumn and winter, many more than what most people think. Here are some of my favourites.

• Winter Violas and Pansies

These stalwart favourites provide us with colour from September straight through to March, providing they are dead-headed. They look great in pots, hanging baskets or planted en masse on the border all through the season. 

The only time they look a bit sad is after a hard frost, but as soon as the midday sun has thawed them out, they are back to looking good. Violas and pansies are hardy and reliably easy for a good show. The main difference between a pansy and a viola is the flower size. Pansies have much larger flowers than Violas, but the Viola produces more of them.

• Cyclamen

For a shady corner or a touch of elegance, Cyclamens add a touch of class to the garden. They make small, compact plants with beautiful dark green foliage that is marbled and veined with exquisite silver markings. The blooms are available in red, dark red, pink, magenta, white, and white with pink markings. Cyclamen are fairly hardy and will continuously flower throughout the autumn, well into the winter until the worst of the frosts.

• Chrysanthemum

Hardy chrysanthemums create great balls of colour in shades of red, yellow, orange, pink and white, that compliments the autumn foliage superbly. The flowers come at a time when herbaceous borders are starting to fade and look scrappy, providing a much-needed injection of colour and giving a bit of life back to a tired garden. Keep them deadheaded for continued free flowering until the first frosts. They grow better in full sun but will cope with some dappled shade. Grow them in fertile soil that does not get waterlogged.

• Heather

For evergreen ground coverage, heathers are the perfect candidate. They are hardy and drought-resistant, surviving through the worst of the winter comfortably. Grow autumn and winter flowering varieties together for an extra-long season of colour. The flowers last a long time and come in shades of white, pink, red and cream. Heathers are tough, low-growing plants suitable for pots, hanging baskets, borders and rockeries. They make neat little plants and can be pruned after flowering to keep bushy. Heathers will grow in most soils but will be happier if given a free-draining, ericaceous soil.

• Dianthus

For winter scent and something a bit more unusual, try growing winter flowering Dianthus. They will flower from autumn up to the coldest months of winter and then re-bloom in early spring when the temperature rises a few degrees. They have single or semi-double flowers with serrated edges to the petals and come in shades of pink, white, red and maroon. The flowers look like velvet and have a delicate, sweet scent to them. Deadhead them to encourage more blooms. They are perfect for pots, baskets and in the border, in full sun or part shade. For best results, grow them in a fertile, free-draining compost.

• Autumn Foliage

For autumn foliage try growing Lamium, ivy, carex, helichrysum, ajuga, thyme, sage, vinca, ophiopogon or pernettya. They are all excellent for providing evergreen colour and foliage for hanging baskets and pots, should bedding fail to bloom. They make superb gap fillers and are the perfect companions for violas, pansies and cyclamen. Many of them have variegated foliage which helps to warm and brighten up the garden in the cold and dark days of October. Once winter has passed, they can be transferred from pots and baskets straight into the garden to add some evergreen colour and structure.