Explore the magical world of mosses and discover how to bring these ancient wonders into a container garden

The carnival of colours in an autumn woodland can be as dazzling as any fairground. As the helter-skelter leaves are lost, this undressing makes way for more diminutive but just as magical plants on naked branches, trunks and the woodland floor. Small in stature, mosses can be easily overlooked and dismissed – and yet, clumped together in hummocks and carpets, they bring emerald, golds and luminous greens to shady hollows. And they’re not just found in woodlands. Mosses can grow almost anywhere – in rivers and deserts, clinging to mountaintops and cloaking walls and pavements. The bonfire moss even turns the blackened soil that remains after a fire into a green tapestry.

‘Some people spend a lot of energy trying to remove mosses from their lawns, but take off your shoes and you’ll find them very pleasant to walk on,’ says David Long, a bryologist at Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, who studies bryophytes (nonvascular seedless plants) such as hornwort, liverwort and moss. ‘People often think mosses are unattractive. But if you look a little harder, you’ll see they’re miniature ecosystems in their own right, with a huge diversity of growth-form, texture, colour and beauty.’