One of the treats of a fall garden is enjoying the sight of clusters of different colored berries on our shrubbery. In my own backyard is a delightful Beautyberry, called “Profusion,” that has the most incredible purple berries later in fall.
It has always puzzled me that there are plants that bloom in the fall, or stranger yet, in the winter. Here are three bulbs that bloom this time of year and can usually only be found and planted in the fall.
September is a glorious month in the northwest - the days are warm, the nights cool, the shadows long, and the lawns are coming alive again after their dry summer slumber. The garden wakes back up for about six to eight weeks before it shuts down for the winter and it is an excellent time to get some serious gardening done.
It always seems a bit odd to me to be talking about fall and winter gardens when we are still very much into late summer, but “fall is in the air” and now is the time to make some changes in our containers and plant some fall veggies while the soils are still warm and conducive to good root growth.
Trees are our friends, in more ways than one. There are a multitude of benefits that we receive from trees and it never hurts to remind ourselves just how important trees are to our ecosystem.
I love summer tropicals. The drama they create is unsurpassed by anything the northwest has to offer. Take my red Abyssinian bananas for example. I always plant a couple of pots up with a red banana in the center as the focal point of the container.
Forget for a minute that I am a professional horticulturist and have worked in the field for over 50 years… try to think of me as just an ordinary home owner that moved into his house 30 years ago and inherited a rather neglected landscape. This is the story of one of my gardens.
A funny thing happens to me this time of year… As we move from the glory of spring to the doldrums of summer, I often find myself in a state of mild depression. I call it my “gardener’s post-partum depression.”
I think it is fair to say that for a lot of us, our vision of a shady garden area is one that is mostly green with a few varieties of plants such as rhodies, a couple of ferns, and a hosta or two. The thought of a diverse mix of plants with colorful foliage, contrasting textures and even some flowers is a reach. Well, I am here to tell you that nothing could be farther from the truth.
Clethera alnifolia, or Summersweet as it is commonly called, is a delightful deciduous shrub that hails from our very own east coast and grows along the entire eastern United States.
What gives Summersweet its name is the flowers, which come in either white or pink on three to five inch racemes.
Everybody loves hydrangeas. After the cacophony of spring has passed and all the rhodies and azaleas are out of bloom, hydrangeas pick up the baton and continue with the parade of color in our gardens.
Ferns are an amazing group of plants. They are among some of the oldest plants to still inhabit the earth. Ever since I was a young child I have been drawn to their delicate and soothing foliage.
Pruning happens multiple times as does weeding, but the best task of all that gets to happen almost year ‘round is planting.
There isn’t a week that goes by that I don’t find some new treasure on the benches in the nursery that I have to take home and try out in my garden. It just so happens that this week that plant is a perennial lobelia.
The Whistling Gardener explains the the history and characteristics of modern roses. Even he had to use the Internet to research aspects of this subject!
