Easy shrubs for early autumn colour The October highlight for me has been the wine-red lollipop leaves of a smoke bush - Cotinus coggygria 'Royal Purple', a medium-sized shrubby plant that usually struggles in Cold Aston's chilly climate. Cotinus comes from the Greek for wild olive, kotinus, and it loves warmth and good light. In previous gardens I have stooled the plant every spring (cut it down to the ground) to encourage larger leaves. Here it has never looked strong enough for a light spring prune, let alone a massacre. Cotinus is often dubbed the smoke bush, because it produces fluffy clouds of flower in summer. These puffs of pink "smoke" gradually reduce down to beige skeletal affairs that show up well against the dark foliage of 'Royal Purple' or the similar 'Notcutt's Variety'. At Spring Cottage these fluffy beige remnants of flower (that drop if you touch them) link the eye to the russet, cream and beige heads of nearby grasses, particularly the giant toetoe grass, Cortaderia richardii. The dark cotinus foliage also creates a contrast with the plethora of yellow daisies I grow here, including the tall, leggy, green-coned Rudbeckia laciniata 'Herbstonne'. As temperatures plummet, the wine-red leaves of 'Royal Purple' develop a bright pink margin that I adore. The leaves will fall, but very late. Smoke bush (also known as Venetian sumach) has enjoyed this sunny summer. I would like to grow more of them, although the orange-tinted 'Flame' is too treelike and would certainly have its limbs lopped by the strong south-westerlies that fly across the Cotswold plateau I'm perched upon. 'Grace' is more compact with pink foliage that reddens in autumn. A visit to John Massey's private garden at Ashwood Nurseries revealed a compact apple-green form called 'Young Lady'. It's not a name I'm fond of, having reached the age where shopkeepers address me by that completely inappropriate moniker. 'Young Lady' (described rather unkindly as "a poodle in a pot" by one nurseryman) produces lots of pale pink flower heads on a bush that will eventually reach 6ft x 6ft (1.5m x 1.5m). It will colour up to orange in autumn. Another compact form, 'Smokey Joe' (syn. 'Sheffield Park'), was developed by Peter Catt of Liss Forest Nursery in Hampshire. Both have their place, although the floaty nature of the smoke bush seems mismatched to compact growth. After all, the charm of 'Royal Purple' here is its airy profile balanced by a purple-leafed vine (Vitis vinifera 'Purpurea') on the other side of my girl shed. Gardeners have fallen out of love with shrubs, but cotinus can be used in late-summer borders, as can the ornamental elders such as Sambucus nigra f. porphyrophylla 'Black Lace' and 'Black Beauty'. Both were bred at East Malling Research station in the mid-Nineties by Ken Tobutt, a scientist looking at gene flow in Sambucus, a very diverse genus. Of the two, I believe 'Black Lace' is better, for it has more divided, blacker foliage than 'Black Beauty' and pale pink flowers. In the woodland border I have planted many shrubs to cast the shade necessary for early flowers, bulbs and ferns. I've added Viburnum plicatum var. tomentosum 'Pink Beauty' because the white summer flowers age to strawberry pink in autumn. The arrangement of outer sterile flowers, similar to the hydrangea, looks beguiling. This widely available shrub was introduced by Scottish plant hunter Robert Fortune (1812-80). Fortune collected tea plants from China. These were planted in Darjeeling in India in 1848, greatly reducing the cost of tea and thereby allowing it to become the drink of the British masses. Tea is my biggest obsession of all (and the Best Beloved's) and with luck we will have the chance to drink a few more cupfuls in the garden before the November gloom descends. I shall know when it's coming, for the musical beech masts will have stopped falling. Buy three Anemone japonica 'Pamina' for £11.99 or six for £18.98 and save £5. Orders to Telegraph Garden Service, Anemone Pamina offer, Dept TL241, 14 Hadfield St, M16 9FG. Cheques/postal orders to Telegraph Garden Service. Or, call 0161 848 1106 or see Telegraph Garden Shop. Ref. Delivery in 14 days.