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Many city gardeners start to run out of steam when September rolls over to October and beyond. As the first mild frosts lightly touch the garden, summer’s bright greens turn to yellow, red, rust, and a kind of grey, and the growing season comes to an end. Yet, even as most plants are winding down, others are coming into their own.
With a little care and thought in plant choices, your autumn garden can be just as beautiful as it was at the height of spring and summer, but in a different, more subtle way. As the trees take on their showy autumn colours, garden plants sprawl, droop and turn yellow. But keep tidying, weeding and pruning as needed; you want it to look charmingly decaying, not outright neglected. (Think of it as the Tim Burton School of garden decorating.)
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One of my personal favourite fall performers is a vine that’s so vigorous, you’re well-advised to regularly prune it ruthlessly over most of the season: Virginia creeper. Despite its name, it’s actually an Ontario native, with palm-sized leaves that vaguely resemble chestnut leaves. (It’s actually a member of the grape family.) In late spring it sends out insignificant little sprays of white flowers, followed by tiny black berries that are toxic to humans, but delicious to birds.
But it’s in the early fall that the vine finally earns its keep. Its leaves turn vibrant red, adding a flash of colour among plants that may still be green. I like it for this reason – and also, because over time it’s grown to almost completely hide the ugly chain link fence that separates my garden from my neighbours’.
Many cultivated grasses take on a more delicate beauty when fall arrives. Zebra grass, pampas grass, maiden grass and Japanese hakonechloa are a few types that tend to turn paler or creamier in the fall, giving them an almost ghostly look that contrasts nicely with other autumn colours and forms around them. Ideally, they should be left alone all winter before you cut them back, for winter interest and to protect the base of the plant through the cold weather.
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I’ve loved Chinese lantern plants since childhood, and their bright orange “lanterns” really do seem to glow in the fall garden. It’s another plant that can spread rapidly if you don’t keep an eye on it, since those lanterns are actually seedheads that happily send their progeny all across your flowerbeds when they burst.
Depending on how much sun it gets, burning bush has greenish-red to dark red leaves throughout the growing season, but this shrub really earns its name when the weather turns cooler. One of my neighbours has a front hedge of it that when the sun hits it directly at this time of year, almost looks like it is literally on fire!
Some types of spirea also make a spectacular show in the autumn. Birchleaf spirea is a tidy shrub with larger and paler green leaves than its more famous cousin, bridal wreath spirea. In spring, it produces small pinkish buds that open to bouquets of tiny white flowers; by autumn, it gradually turns into a rich tapestry of pink, orange, yellow and light green as it fades.
I have one last suggestion, if you’ve got the room (and the sunshine) for it. Another one of my neighbours plants a pumpkin vine in her front garden every year. It starts out quietly enough in spring, gradually extending its tendrils under her other plants. Eventually, around late August, attractive trumpet-like flowers appear, which miraculously turn into miniature but clearly recognizable pumpkins: each one starts out green and gradually turns orange as it grows to full Jack O’Lantern dimensions.
The pumpkins’ progress is a great hit with the neighbourhood children, and there’s a prize at the end, along with the fun of watching them grow: lucky neighbours get our pick of free pumpkins, for Halloween and for pies.
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