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Fantastic Fall Finale

© Mary Henry

Fall is in the air and now, for me, one of the best parts of the garden year is arriving. As long as the season must end, I try to have plenty to remember during all those hours and days until the next gardening season. With the days cooling off and the nights getting chilly, we will be outside even more than we had been during the hottest part of the summer. The weather makes us feel more energetic and involved with the landscape. The leaves will be coming down in a few weeks, and the fall chores will start, but in the meantime, this is my favorite time of year. The number of bugs has dropped and the level of diseases too. I'm not lawn-proud, so I don't have as much work as the grass-obsessed do. Our garden has a large emphasis on fall-blooming plants to make the basis for a spectacular seasonal finale. Here's how we do it.

All the heartier annuals and the tender perennials that I use in containers or in the hardy perennial border are at their peak now. The impatiens are a blanket of color, geraniums have reached maximum size and performance and the varied collection of coleus that covers the ground under the Norway maple has grown up and into each other to form a tapestry that nearly takes my breath away. Usually, by this time, some things are winding down and getting pretty shabby-looking. Since I don't want the garden to look ragged around the edges when the fall display is in progress, the limp, listless early annuals, alyssum, trailing lobelia and annual phlox, and many hot-season annuals that are getting past their prime, are making the big leap to the compost pile. I have added pansies, violas, ornamental cabbage and kale and small blooming asters and chrysanthemums to replace them.

Many late-blooming perennials extend their bloom season to the first frost so, the longer the season, the longer they bloom. Others, like asters and chrysanthemums, can flower until frost by planting early, mid-season and late varieties. Some of my summer favorites are still going strong too, such as the daylily 'Happy Returns', summer phlox that I cut back after the first blooms faded and the lamiums which I had always known as spring bloomers, but which bloom for me here all summer.

Among my favorite perennials for fall and for my shady yard are the turtle-heads (Chelone). Some of them began blooming several weeks ago and they will continue until frost. I like them so well that I plan to write about them for my next article.

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