Gardening Guru
By Ron Rothrock
(Oct. 2014) Hello gardeners. Does your garden lack color or has little or nothing blooming this time of the year? There are flowering perennial plants that you can plant now that will put pizzazz around your yard for next fall and bloom every season after.
There are some fall flowering plants hardy to our area that do well and bloom after your spring and summer flowers have finished doing their thing.
Fall is such a great time of the year for gardening because the soil is warm and any plants you put in the ground get a good start at spreading their roots before going to sleep for the winter. Then, in spring, your plants will grow well and should provide great blooms by next fall.
Not only is fall a good time for planting, it’s also a great time to buy plants. Most gardening centers are now offering bargains on plants as the end of the season approaches; there are some real bargains out there – oftentimes getting 50 percent or more off the regular price.
If you have a large yard, hydrangeas will provide a long show of blooms, as well as hardy hibiscus and rose of Sharon. Anemones, perennial sunflowers (asteraceae), rudbeckia, Joe Pye weed and chrysanthemums (mums), large or in masses, will brighten up your autumn garden, also.
Roses, especially the new “knock-out” variety, provide brilliant blooms well into the fall for you and fit into any size garden.
If you have a medium or small garden, Asters are an all-time favorite for fall blooms that provide a good show and come in a variety of colors from which to choose. Mums, sedum ice- plant “brilliant,” puts on nice blooms, as well as toad lilies.
Another way to ensure you have a colorful late summer-early fall garden is to talk to your neighbors, especially the ones who have fall landscapes you’ve admired. Ask if they can identify their fall beauties by variety, or at least the nursery where they purchased them. The advantage to this method is that you’ll get to know your neighbors and know how well something will grow in your area before you plant it and guarantees to show lots of color.
I know there are more autumn-blooming perennials out there; however, I chose to list the more common ones for our growing area to provide you a shopping list to help you get started now for a great-looking garden next fall.
So get out there and get your hands dirty, it’s free therapy.
Editor’s note: Ron Rothrock is a USAF retired Master Sergeant who has many years of experience in landscaping and gardening, growing berries, vegetables and fruit trees. He loves tinkering in his greenhouse, specializing in perennials.
Thanks for your recommendations on plants that will add pop to a garden. We also had some of the same plants on our list that we got from a NY gardening expert. Here were her suggestions: asters, korean mums, montauk daisies, russian sage and grasses are perennials that come into their own in the fall. She also said annual plants that shine in the fall are salvias (especially the tall ones), dahlias, verbenas, marigolds and lantanas coleus. She mentioned that Fall is a great time for annuals if you have kept up with removing the spent flowers and fertilizing during the summer.