Can you feel it?

The nights are drawing in and there’s a definite chill in the air.

La Rentrée, the arrival of Autumn and why September always feels more like a new beginning than an ending,

Can you feel it?

Something changes at this time of year.

The light is different. The mornings are cooler. There's a smell in the air that wasn't there a few weeks ago. You leave the house in a T-shirt and occasionally regret it.

Summer isn't quite over, but Autumn is beginning to make herself known.

And I love it. Truly.

The French have a wonderful expression for this time of year: La Rentrée.

Literally, the return.

On a practical level, it describes that moment when France gets going again after the Summer. Children go back to school, students return to university, people come home from their holidays and return to work. Normal life resumes.

But I've always felt it describes something more than that.

September feels like a new beginning.

January gets all the attention when it comes to fresh starts, but I've never really understood why. It’s is dark, Christmas is well behind us and everyone is tired. And we're expected to reinvent ourselves while eating a miserable salad.

September makes much more sense to me.

I remember fondly that feeling of going back to school after the long summer break. New shoes. New pencil case. A completely new timetable. Seeing friends you hadn't seen in weeks. And the strange mix of nostalgia for the summer just gone and excitement about what was coming next.

I still feel a little bit of that now.

There's an energy to September that feels purposeful without being frantic. A sense of getting back to things.

The garden knows before we do

You can see the change happening outside too. By late summer, gardens have a completely different character. The fresh greens of May and June have gone. Grasses are beginning to take on warmer tones. Hydrangeas start to fade. Berries arrive. Leaves begin their very gradual turn.

Even the light changes the way we see everything. The lower autumn sun catches grasses and seed heads from behind and suddenly plants you barely noticed in June become the best thing in your garden.

I think it's one of the reasons I love designing gardens for more than just summer. Your garden shouldn't peak for six weeks and then spend the rest of the year apologising for itself.

I'm ready for change

By the end of August, I'm usually ready to say goodbye to the summer (especially the sweltering hot weather!)

Not because I haven't enjoyed it, but because there's something nice about not feeling obliged to squeeze every last drop out of a sunny day.

The pace changes. Windows that have been permanently open begin to close. Food gets warmer, clothes get heavier and evenings darker. The garden becomes somewhere to look at from the inside.

There's a temptation to see all of this as things shutting down. I don't.

To me its the beginning of another cycle.

And gardens are particularly good at reminding us of that.

Autumn isn't the end of the gardening year, It's one of its most important moments. It's a brilliant time for planting. The soil is still warm, there's usually more moisture around and plants have time to establish before winter. Spring bulbs go into the ground with nothing to show for the effort until months later. Trees are planted for futures we can't see yet. There is a lot of quiet optimism in an Autumnal garden. For me, it is also a time when I'm looking at gardens in a different way. I look at structure through a different lens, thinking more about what will carry a garden through winter. Looking at where autumn colour might be missing, and watching how light moves through a space as the sun gets lower.

Quiet recalibration

I love all four seasons for their own merits and characteristics and wouldn't enjoy living somewhere that doesn’t experience such a defined change. But the shift to Autumn has always stirred something in me more than the others. Maybe it is nostalgia for those September mornings and the anticipation of a new school year.

Perhaps that's what I like most about La Rentrée. It gives us permission to reset without all the drama of a New Year's resolution. No declarations, no ‘new you’.

Just quiet recalibration.

Back to work, back to routine, with a better sense of focus.

Our gardens change gear at this magical time of year, so perhaps we should too.

Maybe it's the light.

Maybe I've simply had enough of being too hot.

La Rentrée. I'm ready for it.

Mark Hardy is a Garden & Landscape Designer and founder of Mark Hardy Design, creating characterful residential gardens across Kent, London and the South East.