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Savvy Gardener's Guide to Fall Color

© Barbara M. Martin

By late summer we often see that our flower gardens are flagging — in particular, many of the usual annual flowers look tired and scraggly. The petunias are leggy and the zinnias have mildewed; the fuschias have given up for good and most of the hanging basket plants are drooping. So what's a gardener to do?

Here's a fun solution for the adventurous gardener: try self-sown annuals. Now before you get out the needle and thread, think for a minute about what the word annual means in the plant world. An annual plant is one that lives for only one season. Its main job in life is to grow fast and make tons of seeds so it can reproduce itself.

Since the seeds just happen to be inside the flowers, these plants bloom prolifically! This is great from the gardener's perspective, because not only do these plants bloom heavily, but they can also be encouraged to bloom over a long season.

How? You push these annual plants to keep on blooming by deadheading. (This just means removing spent blossoms — the old and faded flowers.) If you fail to deadhead, not only will the blooming slow down, it may up and quit altogether. Why? Because the plants have fulfilled their purpose of setting seed and their job is done.

Deadheading is particularly important for early season annuals, because you really need to work to push them to extend past their normal blooming season. That's why, by late summer, many of these plants are literally exhausted. Hence the scraggly look many gardens exhibit by late summer. In a word, "YUCK!"

But here's the interesting thing. Over the years, observant gardeners discovered the joy of encouraging certain late season annuals to self-sow (also sometimes called "seed down") and perpetuate themselves in their natural seasonal progression. These plants are tough, easy to grow and full of color. Some are wonderfully fragrant. Many are butterfly and hummingbird friendly, and also attract bees — pollination is the name of the game here! In fact, many of these plants turn up time and again on lists of historic or heirloom plants. Most important, though, is that they bloom late in the season and extend the garden on into fall. Some even tolerate light frosts.

Why do they bloom so late? I am tempted to say "Because God made them that way," but that's probably not the whole story. In any case, allowing and encouraging the self-sown warm season annuals to bloom naturally from late summer and on into fall provides a wonderful floral display just when the garden most needs a pick-me-up. Since these late-bloomers plant themselves each year, what more could the busy (or lazy) gardener ask for! This is especially true since, by definition, these plants do not require that tedious deadheading!

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