Autumn is the most beautiful season in the garden. Brilliance abounds on a grand scale. Towering trees are ablaze in red, rose, orange, and gold.Ornamental grass seed heads sparkle in sunshine, while their weathered blades play music in the wind. Late-blooming perennials offer fleeting spots of beauty. Leaves, like colorful confetti, fall, curl, and flutter before covering the garden floor in shimmering radiance. It is a spectacular finale to the growing season.
By Chris Cohan
Autumn is the most beautiful season in the garden. Brilliance abounds on a grand scale. Towering trees are ablaze in red, rose, orange, and gold.Ornamental grass seed heads sparkle in sunshine, while their weathered blades play music in the wind. Late-blooming perennials offer fleeting spots of beauty. Leaves, like colorful confetti, fall, curl, and flutter before covering the garden floor in shimmering radiance. It is a spectacular finale to the growing season.
To provide even more interest to your autumn garden, plant Acer palmatum ‘Bloodgood’, a Japanese maple known for holding its deep red color before blazing orange and red in autumn. It is a small, slow-growing tree, and may be used as a specimen or within a larger landscape. Callicarpa is a great fall show-stopping shrub covered with purple berries that birds enjoy. A quick growing native shrub, it blooms well in sun to semi-shade and is problem-free.
Asters are native and a fall favorite. New York Asters are covered in bees from late September until the final fall bloom has dropped. To produce more blooms and sturdier stems, and eliminate staking and reduce floppiness, pinch them twice throughout the season.
Still bemoaning the end of another gardening year? Don’t. There is always next year! Now is the time to plan and plant ahead.
Buy and plant bulbs before the soil gets too cold to establish a decent root system by the time the ground freezes. Most bulbs prefer sunny locations, but some woodland bulbs like hyacinths will tolerate a little shade. They need well-drained soil so the bulbs don’t rot. If drainage is a problem, plant elsewhere. Avoid low spots.
Different bulbs are planted at different depths, so follow the package directions. For a small number of bulbs, a trowel is sufficient. For larger quantities, a sharpened long handled shovel with a strong young back attached to it is a must.
Plant a combination of bulbs to produce a long season of color. Snowdrops bloom right through the snow. Along with Grape hyacinths, and Spanish and English bluebells, they are small bulbs, making planting a pleasure, and they multiply and naturalize well.
Tulips are gorgeous. Alas, they are loved by deer, and decline after the first year. What the heck, they are just too cute to say no to (just like my wife). Plant them close to your house where deer are less likely to roam and right there for you to enjoy. Many gardeners replace tulips annually. The beauty of that philosophy is that you can pick an even more beautiful tulip next year.
Daffodils, jonquils, narcissus deserve the back-breaking effort to plant them. They range from single to multiple flowers, fragrant, short or tall, and early- to late-blooming to allow multiple combinations and a long season of bloom.
Here is my secret: buy, buy, and buy some more. Then get that shovel —with a strong young back attached — and start digging and planting. As sure as spring follows winter, I guarantee you will mumble to yourself as they bloom, “I should have planted more.” So, skip the mumble and get to work.
I hesitate to offer this tidbit of information, which procrastinators will undoubtedly hang their garden hat upon. Erlicheer is a narcissus that will bloom six to eight weeks after planting. It grows ten inches tall and has up to 14 frilly, musky-scented blooms on each stem. Plant them in early spring for an early summer bloom. After that, they will bloom every spring.
Now, go dig it, plant it, and enjoy it.
