Gardening Sweet Spots
By Donna Hessel
September has arrived and Autumn is coming soon! If your gardens and containers are looking overgrown and slightly weary, here are some tips on reviving their appearance and adding some new plants to extend the gardening season to the first hard frost.
The quickest way to improve a garden’s appearance is to remove the weeds growing between the plants. Focus on removing the largest, most noticeable weeds first; then concentrate on cleaning up the edging. Remove all of the weeds creeping out over the edge of the bed or between rocks or other edgers. Sharpening the edge of the bed with a shovel will provide an immediate and noticeable improvement.
Remove dead and ragged limbs, stems and plants – anything that is dead or dangling. If you’ve been deadheading annuals and spent perennial flowers regularly, this shouldn’t be a time-consuming task. If you have shrubs that have long and lanky new growth and are disrupting views, trim them back. With all the rain we had this year, my forsythia shrubs bordering the house had stems that reached almost to the roof! They got a hefty trimming. I may not have a lot of yellow flowers next spring, but at least I can see out of my windows again. Remember that spring-blooming shrubs have already set buds for next year, so be judicious when trimming them back.
While mums in various sizes are already stocked in the stores, to me it just seems too early to replace summer container plants with fall mums and flowering kale.
My front porch containers filled with multi-colored impatiens are still going strong. But if your containers are looking leggy and a little worn out, consider adding some fall blooming plants to perk things up until you feel motivated to switch them up for a fall welcome. Now is a great time to find perennials at local garden centers. You can add them to your pots now and plant them in the garden after they’ve added some zest to your containers.
Try purple fountain grass (a great accent with its fuzzy plumes, but it will not over-winter), other short ornamental grasses, or sedums in various colors. Maybe add a flowering cabbage accent.
Purple or pink asters will provide a blanket of small daisy-like blooms. They will also attract bees and butterflies as will Caryopteris. Caryopteris (actually a shrub you can start small in a container) has deep blue flowers and grayish-green variegated leaves and likes neutral soil and full sun. Daisy-like Helenium in sunset colors will add a bright accent to pots. Keep it deadheaded to keep it blooming.
Toad lily – with a spotted, orchid-like flower — is a late season bloomer and likes partial shade.
Oxalis with its deep maroon, clover-shaped leaves is definitely an accent plant and you can over-winter it indoors.
Consider late-blooming succulents such as stonecrop, which is tolerant to weather extremes. Bring these indoors in winter to add textured accents to your houseplants.
Heuchera (coral bells) in a wide range of colors from chartreuse to deep reds can be found to complement any existing container color scheme. Pansies in a wide range of colors added now will bloom until frost and maybe beyond.
If you keep a journal, now is the time to note which plants in your garden did well and what you might want to add or delete for next year. If you haven’t started a journal, now is a good time to start one! Record which plants you really loved. Can you grow more of them next year? Do some of your plants need more space (so easy to overplant in the spring when plants are small!). List which plants to divide or dig up. You can also make a list of projects that can still be accomplished in the next couple of months. Expanded beds? Hardscape repair or replacement? A garden feature you might want to add? If it doesn’t get done this year, you’ll have a reminder to refer to next spring.
Just a few hours of cleaning up and refurbishing now can refresh your perspective as well as your gardens and containers. And it will provide an appreciation for the waning season’s labor that resulted in your gardens’ overflowing flowers and foliage. In anticipation of cooler weather, you’ll relish planning for the mums, pumpkins and flowering kale that you’ll add to officially welcome “autumn” later this month.
Photo credits: Perfect Pots, Strasburg PA (canna and coral bells container, fall mixed container, ornamental grass and flowering cabbage container)
Balconygardenweb.com (toad lily, oxalis container, stonecrop pot)
Donna Hessel (porch impatiens)
Text Resource: Garden Gate Newsletter, September 3, 2020
