Colour, colour everywhere!
In a way, autumn is the season of ‘I should haves’.
“I should have paid more attention to weeds in that section of my garden, now it’s just daunting… can we just take a backhoe to the whole thing?!”
“I should have pruned that shrub after it bloomed because it is looking like an overgrown monster….”
“I should have cut that perennial before it went to seed because I am going to be weeding-out seedlings forever!”
Many of these ‘I should haves’ are now pieces of garden history- lessons [hopefully] learned that will guide us through gardening seasons yet to come, but there is one ‘I should have’ that you can do something about right now and that is ‘I should have planted for fall colour’.
A little gardening exercise
Look around your garden both now, and in the weeks ahead. Is it looking rather ‘blah’? Now take a gaze into your local woodlot or ravine… the forests are ablaze with leaves of fiery red, deep crimson, clear yellow, and spectacular orange. Nature provides an absolutely amazing pallete of colours when it comes to autumn… the trick is to capture this beauty in our gardens.
The fall colour palette courtesy of Mother Nature.
Time to take a walk through your neighbourhood. Keep your eyes open for plants that seem to ‘pop’ in other peoples’ gardens. You can also take a walk through the woods and let our native plants speak to you. In any case, this is a great time to scout-out, identify, and research those ‘fall-showstoppers’ and figure out which ones you would want to incorporate into your own garden; and, since autumn is generally a great time for planting (and transplanting), you could even make some space in your garden, take a trip to your local garden centre to pick up some new babies, and put your ideas into action.
Phew. There’s one ‘I should have’ averted.
Inspiration from the garden: the gorgeous fall combination of Japanese blood grass (Imperata cylindrica ‘Red Baron’) and Tiger Eyes Staghorn Sumac (Rhus typhina ‘Bailtiger’), the yellow ‘pop’ of redbud (Cercis canadensis) foliage and the deep crimson canopy of Chinese dogwood (Cornus kousa). Top photo courtesy of Alicia K.
More fall colour inspiration from the garden: a 2018 photo taken In early November of witchhazel (Hamamelis x intermedia), a 2018 photo taken in early November of the spectacular colour show of ‘Full Moon’ Japanese maple (Acer shirasawanum ‘Aureum’) and another picture of Japanese blood grass (Imperata cylindrica ‘Red Baron’) courtesy of Alicia K.
More fall colour inspiration to follow on the GROW Instagram account!