Trish Symons
Japanese blood grass
North of the City
September 08, 2008 10:28 AM
By: Kate Seaver
If you are like most gardeners, the hope, energy and enthusiasm you experienced in the spring has probably waned by September. Despite our best intentions, gardening doldrums usually set in about mid-July. The glorious flush of June blooms fade to lacklustre late summer gardens. It seems easier to retire to the front porch with a good book than to battle weeds, pests, heat and water bans.
Don’t despair! As autumn temperatures cool, that September back-to-school energy instills a spirit of renewal. Local greenhouses beckon, newly replenished with the burnished colours of fall. Give into the temptation and visit your favourite nursery. Allow yourself to be dazzled by the amazing array of hardy annuals, harvest perennials, fall flowering shrubs and glorious berried trees. Their irresistible fall patina is guaranteed to instantly renew your gardening energy.
The harvest season is the ideal time to correct a few mistakes while you can still see them in your garden. As you shift things around, fill the holes you create by planting in vibrant fall colours that will improve your succession of bloom. For perennials gardeners, remember that one of the key steps for great succession of bloom is to follow the “one-third, one-third, one-third” rule. For example, if you have 15 different varieties of perennials in your garden, five should bloom in spring, five should bloom in summer and five should bloom from September and November.
Just like the harvest, plant choices are abundant. Certain summer “sleepers” are chameleons that turn magnificent shades in the fall: plumbago, autumn joy sedum, Virginia creeper and burning bush. Other summer beauties continue to bloom until hard frost including carpet roses, lavender, climbing hydrangea and the endless new variety of hydrangea shrubs. Reliable fall bloomers for full sun exposure include hardy asters, hardy mums, rudbeckia, coneflowers, Japanese blood grass, cardinal flowers and gooseneck. Fall blooming perennials for the shade include monkshood, Japanese anemone and bugbane.
You can also extend a wonderful autumn welcome to your guests by dressing up your front entrance. Pot up a couple of “greeting urns” near the front door with great harvest colours. Follow the basic container design principle by including a vertical, clumpers and trailers. For avid container gardeners, these are often referred to as “thrillers, fillers and spillers.” Fountain grasses or millet are the plants of choice for the vertical interest in the centre of the pot. Kale, asters, mums and icicle pansies are fabulous fillers to encircle the vertical.
Ivy is the ideal choice as your trailing interest. Choose complementary colour schemes for your containers: either red, yellow and orange with a dash of purple or pinks, purples and whites with just enough yellow to add some pizzazz. Be sure to restrict your container choices to plants hardy enough to last right through until the end of November.
Just think … one more spurt of energy, a glorious burst of harvest colour and you will extend your gardening enjoyment for months to come.