My Favorite Fall Flowers for Fall Gardens

Do you look out your house and windows and see withered, tired old plants worn out from showing off their summer colors and ready to go to sleep for the winter?

In spring, gardeners spring forth with zest and energy as the first bulbs begin to pop through the winter soil, and out come the hoes and racks, the garden hose; and slipping on our garden gloves we bustle out to bring multi- hued beauty to the world in our perfect flower gardens.

Somewhere between the hot dry days of late July and the humid muggy days of August, our gardens begin to fade and only remnants of those glory days of spring remain. Even our annuals, petunias and impatiens are getting long and scraggly looking. We try, but "the bloom is off the rose" for many of our flower gardens by the first of September.

Don't give up though, take a trip to the nursery. It's the perfect medicine for every gardener.

Here are some great prescription plants for a tired fall garden.

Asters

Aster is her name and she can be a showpiece in your autumn garden with her beautiful shades of white, purple, pink, lavender and even red! Aster is a prolific late summer and fall bloomer. The most common and readily available is the New England Aster which blooms from August through October, with two to four foot plants. They are hardy in USDA zones 4-9 for most varieties.

Asters do best in full sun, but can adjust to light shade. The plants grow into fairly large bushes, so when planting give them about 18 inches on all sides. The good news, as with most perennials, is they can be divided every 3-4 years in the spring or in the fall after they have finished flowering.

Like mums, you may need to pinch the tops back during the summer to prevent early blooms and to get them to bush out nicely. A gardening friend at garden club shared with me that this pinching back should be done before mid July or you might have less bloom in the fall. As with all flowering plants, deadhead as blooms wilt to encourage more blooms.

You can grow asters from seeds that are sown indoors during the winter or you can sow them directly into the garden after frost danger has passed. But you can also buy mature plants in the fall and plant them right now! They'll brighten up that dreary fall flower bed with fresh new spring colors.

Shasta Daisies

Another favorite fall flower of mine is the Shasta Daisy. With it's cheery yellow heart center and it's pure snowy white petals, they can cheer up the most forlorn gardener. We can thank that amazing plant breeder Luther Burbank, who worked for 15 years to perfect the Shasta Daisy by breeding wild species of chrysanthemums for all over the world to find the perfect daisy.

Shastas can grow from 1-3 feet tall and generally bloom in mid summer to fall. You can delay blooming by pinching back early in the year and in fact, a good pinchback is necessary to bushier plants.

They grow in USDA Zones 4-10, thriving in the full sun. Their soil needs to be enriched with the additions of good organic materials like compost and hummus. Shastas are a thirsty little beast needing plenty of watering during their growing season, but good drainage or they'll rot during the dormant time of winter. Space them about a foot apart and divide the clumps in the spring about every 3 to 4 years.

Joe Pye Weed

Don't you love the name! Joe gets his name from a Native American named Joe-Pye, who used the plant to cure fevers. It has several other common names including snake root, kidney root and purple boneset. It's one of my favorite fall butterfly attractors. Plant Joe Pye right along side some Sedum, a butterfly bush or yarrow and sit back for a butterfly orgy. The Eastern Tiger Swallowtail, Monarchs and Tawny-edged Skipper are just a few of the butterflies that flock to Joe-Pye.

Pinch Joe back in the early spring so he'll bush out and be a bit shorter, as he has a tendency to fall over in the wind. I stake him with garden string strung across the front about 2 feet up to support. He does well with close neighbors and planting a lower perennial or busy annuals in front of him help support the lower growth.

My favorite variety of Joe Pye Weed is Gateway which grows to about 4 feet tall and is one of the hardier varieties, will bloom clear up to first hard frost. You can plant from seed indoors 8-10 weeks before the last spring frost and then transplant. But you can sow seed into the soil in any season, even the fall, and just patiently wait for them to grow.

Joe likes a moist but well drained soil and is fairly hardy. Other varieties of Joe have flower colors from white, lavender, wine to dark purple. The butterflies like the purple! While Joe can handle full sun, he prefers a bit of shade especially during the hottest part of the day.

Sedum or Stonecrop

If I could choose one fall plant to recommend for the novice gardener it would be Sedum. I don't think it's possible to kill them and they have such beautiful shades of green succulent foliage that even if it never bloomed, you'd still like to have the plant in your flower garden. The foliage is almost more interesting than the large showy flowerheads that are at their peak in the fall.

The English preferred the name Stonecrop for these succulents, because they could often be found literally growing from stones. Sedum is related because the Latin, sedere, means "sit", which of course stonecrop did. It sat upon stones! Sedum still does wonderfully in stone gardens, as long as there is some good water and drainage around the area.

There are tall varieties like Meteor, Autumn Joy, and one of my favorites, Frosty Morn. But there are also short stone cropping varieties like Gold Moss Sedum or Biting Stonecrop. There are over 400 varieties of Sedum and if you grow to love them as many gardeners do, you can even join a cult of sedum growers who share their various plants all over the world at www.cactus-mall.com/sedum/

Some prefer the cold, some prefer the heat, some prefer the shade, some love full sun. Make sure you check on growing and maintenance conditions for the sedum variety to choose. And then just enjoy it flourish and thrive.

They only bloom once, late in their growing season and they do not need any deadheading. The flowers last for a long time sometimes even into winter. Every three or four years, the plants may begin to die out and it's time to divide them. New plants can be propagated from simple stem cutting.

Fall gardening

Gardeners understand that gardening is confined to warm growing months, but continues as a hobby and a passion all through the year. As we move through the seasons, our gardening activities vary, but by making sure we've included a full season of plants, including the above fall blooming beauties, we can continue to show off our love of our babies all year round.

That killing frost will come for those of us in Zones 4-10 at some point! But until then, there is no need for bare, ugly flower beds full of dying plants. Clean them up, prepare them for winter and make room for your fall flowers. And of course..there is always the mums! Plop a few of them in a bare spot and bring fall instantly to your house!

Brew some hot cider and enjoy fall gardening. Gardening never ends!

Resources:

Personal experience

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aster_%28gen

http://books.google.com/books?id=U1sNLkiml0sC&dq=Shasta+Daisy&printsec=frontcover&source=bn&hl=en&ei=52aiSv7GNYSmsgOVt4iNDw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=8#v=onepage&q=&f=false

http://landscaping.about.com/od/plantsforsunnydryareas/p/autumn_joy.htm

www.cactus-mall.com/sedum/

http://oldfashionedliving.com/joe-pye-weed.html