Autumn blooms in vibrant shades
Mark Cullen offers five ways to cultivate some colour,
When your hanging baskets are hanging more than you want and your petunias have gone stringy, it’s time to replace them with reliable fall-blooming plants.
Truth is, annual flowering plants have a finite life: They are called annuals, since they complete their life cycle within one year.
Often the poor performance of snapdragons, alyssum and the like has nothing to do with you, it is just that their job is finished and it is time for them to go to seed.
Instead, here are my top five perennials for fall colour: 1. Sedum spectabilus. There are many sedum varieties to choose from, but “spectable” is my favourite this time of year. It begins to look its best when the kids go back to school: a reward for overseeing a busy summer with them in your charge. This plant produces a broad flower in a variety of colours that cover the range between red/bronze and magenta. I recommend that you plant a few up near your front door (they work well in containers as well as in the garden) where butterflies will find them. As you approach your door, a winged greeting committee will say hello as they forage for nectar and pollen. 2. Ornamental grasses. I have written whole columns on ornamental grasses, and there are a few books devoted to them. For me to refer to them here, broadly, as a complete family may seem a bit trite to the collector of ornamental grasses, but I am doing it anyway. They always look best in autumn, when they sprout tall plumes of flowers, followed by the most attractive seed heads that you can imagine. Like a field of wheat at its best, pregnant with grains ready for harvest, your ornamental grasses look fabulous when they are swaying in the breeze. Come winter, the seed heads on my miscanthus chinensus are frequented by nut hatches, chickadees and sparrows. This is a not-so-gentle reminder that winter in a Canadian garden is really not so bad. One thing to remember when buying ornamental grasses: Be sure that you buy the clumping varieties and not the ones that travel by root and rhizome around your yard and under your fence. Ask questions when buying, to be sure. 3. New England asters. The cultivated varieties are related to the native plant, only they flower longer and the blooms are arranged in tight masses for best effect. Butterflies love these, too. Plant lots where you want to punch up the colour, using bright white, red or blue. Yes, blue. It is hard to find perennials that have a blue flower this time of year, but asters are your number one choice. They are winter hardy to well north of Ottawa, too. 4. Chrysanthemums. The introduction of Belgium mums means you can now purchase the most gorgeous new varieties for less than the old-fashioned ones with a flower bud count that is through the roof. Really. I had one last year at our front door, and I counted more than 700 blossoms on it. That was about two cents per blossom. You can’t get better value for your bloom-bucks than that. In cool fall weather, they last up to six weeks. They tolerate early-season frost, and with some luck, they may come back next year. They are not as reliably winter hardy as the asters. 5. Roses. Got you there, didn’t I? We think of roses as late spring and early summer flowering plants. People use them in June weddings for this reason. Well, that is accurate, BUT rose bushes generally bloom a second time quite reliably right about now. The main difference in a fall rose blossom is that it lasts much longer than the spring production, due to the cool temperatures this time of year.
I have picked roses and brought them indoors as cut flowers as late as mid-November in my Zone 5 garden. A bonus is the fact that you can get a great deal on rose bushes this time of year at most garden retailers. All you have to do is prepare the soil with lots of triple mix and plant them. Rose petals are edible: another bonus.
Shrub roses will survive our winter without protection, but most others need to be mounded up with soil about 30 centimetres, but not for some time yet: early to mid-November works in most areas. Don’t even think about it until the Grey Cup final is about to be played. Mark Cullen is an expert gardener, author, broadcaster and garden editor of Reno & Decor magazine. Get his free monthly newsletter at markcullen.com. Watch him on CTV Canada AM every Wednesday at 8:45 a.m. Email him at groundskeeper@markcullen.com. Follow him on Twitter @MarkCullen4 and Facebook.