Creating fabulous fall gardens
For many of us fall is great season to decorate before freezing weather and celebrate the holidays as temperatures cool off. For those of us in non-freeze zones fall is a good time to do your winter planting to help keep things looking fresh in the garden for the winter!
What's available?
This is always the biggest question and the biggest limitation to what plants and flowers you can work with. Try to work with your local garden center and see if they can find some slightly different fall season flowers for you to try!
Northern US and Canada
Mums, kale and Pumpkins are the traditional decorations, but there are lots of other plants to choose from to help make a great autumn display. With the drop in temperatures that goes along with autumn a lot of great spring flowers revive and put on a spectacular show until the first freeze.
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Don’t forget perennials & shrubs!
There are lots of wonderful perennials to add flowers in fall and can be planted in the landscape or used temporarily in containers to add texture and fall color. Most of these can be used in containers or as decoration and still have time to add them to the landscape before winter sets in. Make sure to water any new plants going into the landscape well and mulch around the base heavily to avoid problems with winter freeze and thaw of the soil!
Perennials: | Shrubs:
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Southern and Western US
For the very late frost or freeze free regions of the United States, fall heralds the cool season and the diversity of plants you can use for autumn and winter color really depends on how cold your garden gets! Even traditional spring flower that are frost tolerant can be planted in fall for flowers, they will survive over the winter and be much larger to bloom again in spring! Remember that a lot of a plant’s tolerance to frost and freeze has to do with how much time it has been exposed to cold temperatures, so a plant that has had a few weeks in the garden to adjust can handle colder weather than a plant that just came out of a warm greenhouse! Of course you’ll still see Chrysanthemums, Pumpkins and Kale but your have so many options in cool season flowers!
Frost tolerant Fall Flowers
Where you have occasional frosts and freezes, here are some frost tolerant plants that may need a little bit of protection but don’t mind cold nights above freezing! Sometimes in the winter, plants like Supertunia, Superbells and Superbena will stop flowering, but only to grow larger, and they will begin flowering again in spring.
Frost Free gardens
For those of us lucky enough to live in frost free areas of the US, the long cool winter season is a great way to enjoy a lot of flowers that summer’s heat can cause to go out of bloom, so while the temperatures are mild get an extra season of beauty from these flowers!
No matter where you live there is always a fall season for color. How cold you get is the main factor in determining which flower will best suit your garden. So whether it is just a few weeks around the fall holidays or all winter color, we have plants that are suited to your area. Celebrate the end of summer with something new this year!
