{"id":112,"date":"2008-09-02T03:14:25","date_gmt":"2008-09-02T11:14:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/garden\/?p=112"},"modified":"2015-11-24T07:33:01","modified_gmt":"2015-11-24T15:33:01","slug":"fall-plants-and-plans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/fall-plants-and-plans\/","title":{"rendered":"Fall Plants and Plans"},"content":{"rendered":"

FALL PLANTS AND PLANS
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<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I have always thought that most gardeners do not pay enough attention to the fall garden.\u00a0 Of course, things are not nearly as bad as they used to be in the nineteen sixties and seventies when the majority of people relied almost entirely on the so-called “hardy mums”\u009d to carry their gardens until the first hard frost.\u00a0 In my hometown, fall mums were one of the standard indicators of household income.\u00a0 Wealthy people had their private gardeners or landscapers install scores of color-coordinated mums just after Labor Day.\u00a0 As the season wore on and the blooms wore out, the plants would be replaced as necessary.\u00a0 Middle class people used smaller numbers of those same mums to fill in the obvious gaps in the front beds and ornament their porches.\u00a0 Everyone else bought one or two plants to flank the front door.\u00a0 In almost every case, the mums were treated as annuals.\u00a0 Frost nipped off the growth and even those plants installed in the ground and watered well generally did not survive the winter.<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Mums are fine, but now we gardeners have so many more choices.\u00a0 I love the fall blooming hybrid anemones that are often called Anemone japonica or Japanese anemone.\u00a0 The dark green foliage, which provides interest throughout the growing season, might remind you of elongated maple leaves.\u00a0 The flowers, which begin blooming around the first week in September, are somewhat daisy-like and come in shades of cream, pink and deep rose.\u00a0 I love the old favorite, ‘Honorine Joubert’, which has white single blooms at the top of two-foot stems.\u00a0 I have just fallen in love with the gorgeous, shell-pink ‘Max Vogel’, which also has single flowers with slightly ruffled edges.\u00a0 The centers are orangey-gold and the plants are relatively tall, topping out at about thirty-six inches.<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

But suppose you have the dreaded “shade problem”\u009d and have resigned yourself to the fact that you will never have anything to look at in the fall but fading, slug-damaged hosta leaves?\u00a0 Help is on the way, in the form of the toad lily, Tricyrtis hirta.\u00a0 Toad lily is usually less than twenty-four inches tall, with elongated green leaves and one-inch, star-shaped flowers that some catalog copy writers have likened to orchids.\u00a0 Depending on the species, the flowers are varying shades of white and purple, sometimes with whimsical dark purple freckles.\u00a0 Unlike many shade lovers, toad lilies can even tolerate reasonably dry conditions.\u00a0 They are great for light to medium shade, though even these “toads”\u009d will have trouble in deep shade.<\/font><\/p>\n

For full sun or light shade, I love the perpetually rampaging Clematis terniflora, sometimes known as Clematis paniculata or sweet autumn clematis.\u00a0 This climbing plant has very few inhibitions, and, given time, will cover just about any surface with which it comes in contact.\u00a0 It can also creep along the ground, and looks lovely if it is allowed to grow over, under and around something more subdued, like English ivy.\u00a0 The seed heads are almost as attractive as the small, four-petaled flowers, which are born in enormous profusion.\u00a0 Sweet autumn clematis will seed itself with wild abandon.\u00a0 I dig up the seedlings and transplant them to ugly corners of the garden.\u00a0 The ones that come up in the lawn get mowed down promptly.\u00a0 This doesn’t usually discourage them all that much, but it keeps them from spreading.<\/font><\/p>\n

If you love chrysanthemums, then make an investment in varieties that will return year after year.\u00a0 This takes a little advance planning, but if you order some now, they will perform quite respectably next fall.\u00a0 Sometimes called “garden mums”\u009d, these plants grow like any other perennial and are generally a bit less compact than those “hardy mums”\u009d you get from the garden centers.\u00a0 The garden mums come in a variety of colors and forms and thrive in full sun.\u00a0 To create bushier plants, you should pinch them back on Memorial Day and again on the Fourth of July.\u00a0 Adequate moisture is also a must.\u00a0 In my garden I have a rambunctious pink variety that resembles one called ‘Helen Mae’.\u00a0 It is about eighteen inches tall and sprawls about two feet.\u00a0 The plentiful blooms are darker pink in the center and lighter towards the tips of the petals.\u00a0 It cheers me up when the other plants begin their autumn decline.<\/font><\/p>\n

Local garden centers should have a good selection of fall-blooming plants, including asters, boltonia, Japanese anemones and sweet autumn clematis, in the next few weeks.\u00a0 Plant all of them promptly, so they have time to get established before cold weather sets in.\u00a0 For an excellent selection, you can also try Bluestone Perennials, 7211 Middle Ridge Road, Madison, OH 44057, (800) 852-5243, <\/font>www.bluestoneperennials.com<\/font><\/a>.\u00a0 Free catalog.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

FALL PLANTS AND PLANS \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I have always thought that most gardeners do not pay enough attention to the fall garden.\u00a0 Of course, things are not nearly as bad as they used to be in the nineteen sixties and seventies when the majority of people relied almost entirely on the so-called “hardy mums”\u009d to … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-112","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fall"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=112"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1671,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112\/revisions\/1671"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}