Autumn is a great time to purchase new plants and freshen up the container gardens you had in spring and summer. As the weather cools and warm-season flowers bloom less frequently, switch over to brightly-colored foliage and flowers in deep shades of orange, red or yellow to dress up your deck or patio and celebrate the new season.
These lovely plants will stay green through fall, and the holly berries will turn bright red in winter. Place them in separate containers and arrange them to create a lovely green corner on the deck or patio.
Photo Credit: Mary Moore
Sedum ‘Autumn Joy’ and
Russian sage are beautiful plants that provide wonderful food sources for pollinators.
Photo Credit: Mary Moore
Fall is a great time to plant salad greens – like this oriental greens mix – or herbs like
basil,
thyme and
parsley.
Photo Credit: Mary Moore
Check out the clearance section of your garden center and choose carefully. For $2.25, I added a
coleus, two
mums and four
snapdragons to my
New Guinea impatiens – and got a great autumn planter for a great price!
Photo Credit: Mary Moore
Thyme is a wonderful plant in and out of containers in your garden. Most species are tough, drought tolerant, edible and pretty in flower.
Photo Credit: Mark A. Miller
The Evergreen Container Garden
Many garden centers stock up on beautiful evergreens in autumn, and you can create lovely arrangements using a few choice plants. As you examine evergreens, notice how the shades of green and foliage textures interact with each other. Placing a tall, thin arborvitae next to a low-growing blue rug juniper emphasizes the shape and color of each plant. Some evergreens are a lovely chartreuse green, while others have deep-green leaves. Most hollies have lovely glossy leaves and provide good seasonal color. (Look for plants with green berries that will turn red in winter.) Camellias are also lovely and can bloom either in late fall or very early spring. Plant several bushes in a very large container, or plant shrubs in separate containers to create a grouping of lovely trees. In the spring, you can move the planters to create a backdrop for your spring-blooming containers.
The Pollinator Garden Container
As cooler weather approaches, beneficial insects start running out of food. They’ll appreciate a container full of flowering plants filled with pollen to harvest. How do you discover their favorite plants? Easy! Just follow the bees in your garden center and note where they’re feeding. If you see a lot of bees harvesting pollen in one area, carefully reach in and pick your favorite plant from the group. Salvias, herbs with small flowers and hyssop are particularly popular with insects, and they’re a beautiful addition to container gardens. You may even want to place a planter in your fall vegetable garden, as well as on your patio or deck.
The “I Love My Harvest” Planter
Fall is an excellent time to grow herbs and salad greens in a container. Place a planter filled with fresh basil, parsley, Chinese chives or thyme outside your kitchen door for an easy harvest. You can start lettuce by seed easily: Sprinkle lettuce seeds on the surface of a container filled with potting soil, lightly cover with less than ¼ an inch of soil, then water. In just a few weeks, you can be enjoying tasty homegrown salad greens!
The Frugal – But Beautiful – Container
As the warm growing season comes to a close, the clearance section at your local garden center may contain some great container plant options at very reasonable prices. Often small annuals that have experienced some stress to their flowers or foliage end up in the clearance section, but they can quickly recover and put on a good show if planted in a container with good potting soil and given proper food and water.
Do be careful when buying bargain plants, though, and examine your clearance options thoroughly. Touch the soil to see if it’s lightly moist. If the plant is completely dry, it may have been dried out several times and be too damaged as a result. If you must have a plant that has extremely dry soil, soak it – pot and all – in a container of lukewarm water for an hour or so until the soil is well-hydrated again. When you replant it, loosen the roots and existing soil, then plant it in lightweight potting soil that will hold water better.
Also examine clearance-sale plants to ensure that there are no signs of insect or fungal problems. Choose another plant instead of taking one home with potential infestation issues. Check out the bottom of the plant for insects and any signs of being root-bound. If large roots are growing out of the container, gently remove the plant to see if the root ball is surrounded tightly with lots of roots. It’s good to see a nice root structure, but a plant that’s too tightly bound with roots may have trouble growing more outside of the original root ball. Firmly massage the root ball when transplanting to loosen up the roots.
As autumn weather fluctuates, routinely check your planters to ensure that the soil doesn’t dry out with those occasional warm days. As your container plants flourish, enjoy the classic beauty of autumn on your deck or patio!
