What to look for in autumn pieces
The colours should not all be at full volume
Autumn goes wrong when everything is turned up at once — bright orange, hard red and yellow together read as a shop display rather than a season. What happens outside is more muted and more mixed: rust next to olive, ochre next to brown, with green still hanging on in places. Look for a piece where at least some of the material has barely turned.
Seed heads and berries do the work here
There are very few flowers in a convincing autumn arrangement. What carries it is the material that comes after flowering — seed pods, berries, hips, bare twigs and grasses gone to fluff. A piece built from ordinary flowers in orange is a summer arrangement in the wrong colour, and it will look it.
A short season, then a long time in a box
This comes out in September and goes away at the end of November, which means the packing matters as much as the piece. Berries glued on rather than fixed to the stem come off in storage, and anything with loose seed heads sheds. Buy something you can lay flat in a box, and it will still be worth putting out next year.