A fall garden can be just a lovely and filled with color as a spring or summer garden, you just have to some advanced planning and planting to get the fall color you want.
Many plants that bloom in the fall to provide floral and foliage color, plus berries, bark, and other focal points that provide color and interest. Berry-producing plants in the fall garden will provide food for wildlife also.
Use these tips for creating a colorful and eye-opening fall garden to extend the outdoor color season and wildlife visitors.
Fall Flowers
Chrysanthemums are the popular fall flower choice. Attractive, textured foliage, and several bloom colors to select from, chrysanthemums (mums) are a perennial plant that can be grown in a container or planted outdoors.
Snapdragons, pansies, and marigolds are colorful annual flowers that can be planted in late summer to produce fall bloom color.
Asters, goldenrod, and swamp sunflower are fall-blooming perennial flowers that add color to a fall garden year after year.
Fall Blooming Shrubs
Forsythia sage produces a buttery-yellow bloom in the fall and will reach a mature size of 8-feet (2.4m) tall and equally as wide.
Bottlebrush Buckeye is a perennial shrub that produces a white flower formation in summer that resembles a baby bottle’s brush. The long-lasting blooms turn a bright gold color in late summer and remain that color until frost. This fall-blooming shrub reaches a mature height of 15-feet (4.5m).
Hubricht’s bluestar is a drought-tolerant, perennial shrub that forms 3-foot (90cm) tall clumps. The blue spring flowers fade and die in the summer but the shrub remains covered with green leaves. In fall the green leaves of the hubricht’s bluestar turn a stunning shade of gold.
Colorful Fall Trees
The ginkgo tree is a hardy, slow-growing tree that is tolerant of drought, poor soil, and roadway salt. Leaves of the ginko tree will turn golden-yellow in fall and will drop off on the same day.
Japanese maples come in red-leafed or green-leafed varieties and both will provide red fall foliage but the green-leafed variety will be brighter and provide fall color longer.
Witch hazel trees will reach a mature height of 15-feet (4.5m) and will provide fall color in bold yellow, red, and orange.
Colorful Fall Plants
Ornamental grasses, like pampas grass, reach their peak in fall. They will add texture, volume, and color to the fall-flowering garden and seeds heads to feed wildlife.
Colorful fall vegetable plants, like kale and ornamental peppers, are ideal for a fall garden and wildlife food.
Barberry, chokeberry, and manzanita produce colorful berries in the fall, plus green leaves and small blooms in spring and summer.
Drawing a Simple Garden Sketch Plan (Part 10 of 11)
