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A Recipe for
Enjoying Autumn Landscapes
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Cool mornings, warm afternoons,
shorter (and shorter) days and evenings. Throw in a
few more “breezy” days. Everywhere are the signs
that summer is packing its bags and preparing to
head south. Fall is a season of transition as the
garden’s plants complete their seasonal growing
cycle and prepare for winter. But the end of
summer need not mean the end of a colorful and
visually interesting garden.
The first frost, now on average
about three weeks off, will end the life of
unprotected tender annuals, but it will only ripen
the color of ornamental grasses and begin the
garden’s transition to its distinctive winter
displays of evergreen foliage, the persistent fruits
of crabapples and shrub roses, the strongly upright
maroon and straw colored clumps of ornamental
grasses, and the resilient stems and seed heads of
last summer’s exuberant garden flowers.
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If you landscape is made up primarily of lilacs,
spireas, barberries, and assorted other common
“alien” species, your autumn landscape experience
will be considerably diminished. Most of
these widely sold, and I think overused, landscape
plants do not grow well in Wyobraska, and while some
of them do develop good fall leaf color in other
regions of the country with longer growing seasons,
most of these shrubs rarely develop good fall color
here, leaving only a short and unpredictable spring
flowering and good, but often short-lived, early
summer foliage as their only redeeming value.
Wyobraska is not New England—a
region whose climate and indigenous plants combine
to produce dependable, spectacular, and long
displays of fall foliage. To develop the potential
autumn enjoyment of Wyobraska it requires
incorporating into your garden or |
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Previous Articles
April 27, 2006
Crazy Clematis
May 04, 2006
Ornamental Grasses
May 11, 2006
Perennials
May 18, 2006
Herbs
May 25, 2006
Hummingbird Garden
Party
June 1, 2006
Gardening with Kids
June 8, 2006
Wildflower Week
June 15th
Shade Garden
June 29
Thumbs,
Feathers, Fruit
July 6, 2006
Reading Plants
July 13th
Back to the Oregon
Trail
July 20th
Theatre West Garden
Walk
July 27th
Notes from the Garden Walk
August 4th
Cereal Killers
August 10th
Grass Hedges
August 17th
Xeriscape
Refresher Course
August 24th
Fall is for
Planting
August 31st
Tree Roots at the
Old Pen
Coming Soon
A Prairie Garden Journal
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The first frost, now on average
about three weeks off, will end the life of
unprotected tender annuals, but it will only ripen
the color of ornamental grasses and begin the
garden’s transition to its distinctive winter
displays of evergreen foliage, the persistent fruits
of crabapples and shrub roses, the strongly upright
maroon and straw colored clumps of ornamental
grasses, and the resilient stems and seed heads of
last summer’s exuberant garden flowers.
The changes that occur in a
garden or landscape through the summer are the slow,
incremental changes of plant growth, of flowers
forming buds, of buds opening to flowers, of flowers
gradually turning to seedhead. But with the first
frost, the seasonal changes of autumn will be
wholesale—entire plants and groups of plants will
change color within a few days, trees and shrubs
will be transformed from masses of green to
silhouettes of gray branches and stems within the
span of two weeks, evergreen trees and shrubs,
camouflaged among the summer leaves of deciduous
trees and shrubs emerge from the background to
assume their prominent role in the landscape for the
coming winter, the colorful masses of summer flowers
will become the patches of erect deep brown
stalks—potential perches for the smaller of the
birds that will feed on the garden’s buffet of seeds
through the winter.
But autumn is also the primary flowering season for
several essential plants in any western prairie
garden or landscape. Asters, tall sedums, and the
ornamental prairie grasses—big blue stem, little
blue stem, switch grass, and Indian grass. These
essential plants soften the effect of summer’s
departure by extending the flower season of the
garden into late October or even early November.
Ornamental grasses don’t bloom, as such, but there
can be no question that autumn is the primary season
of effect for the ornamental prairie grasses. They
finally achieve their full size in early September,
filling the visual void left by summer’s fading
flowers, and then begin to turn their distinctive
fall colors of russet, burgundy, maroon, and
orange. Not until winter arrives in late December
will the intensity of the fall color of the grasses
begin to fade. |
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landscapes the plants that provide the
distinctive fall color and interest of this
region. In fact, fall is a good time to test the
“regional adaptability” of your landscape. If your
landscape or garden doesn’t look healthy, colorful,
and visually interesting throughout the fall, the
chances are that you have a lot of poorly adapted
plants.
It’s one of the reasons why
fall is a good time for the do-it-yourself homeowner
to do those landscape renovation projects. You’ll
be less likely to buy those poorly adapted spring
plants and more likely to buy the well-adapted fall
plants—simply because they look better now. I
suggest you try the following recipe for developing
a landscape or garden with good autumn enjoyment
potential.
Recipe
for
Autumn Landscape Enjoyment
List of
Ingredients
Compost—enough to
place a 2 inch depth over entire bed
Sulfur—enough to spread 5-10 lbs. per
100 Square feet over entire bed
Shredded Wood Mulch—enough to cover
entire bed with 3-4 inch depth
1/3 Evergreen trees and shrubs (avoid
Colorado spruce in small landscapes)
1/3 Deciduous shrubs (tall, upright
shrubs for “structure”, medium shrubs like shrub
roses, butterfly bush, and red-twigged dogwood, for
summer, fall and winter interest
1/3 Perennials and ornamental grasses—select
2/3 perennials that bloom summer and fall.
Directions
Prepare landscape
bed by spreading 2 inches compost over entire bed
area, and spread 5-10 lbs. sulfur per 100 Square
feet of bed. Loosely till or otherwise coarsely
incorporate soil amendments.
Develop a
planting plan to fill the bed space with the
proportions of each type of plant as outlined
above. (Remember, most Wyobraska perennials get as
large as small shrubs and need to be spaced from 2
to 5 feet apart.)
Plant the plants.
Mulch the entire
bed with 3-4 inches shredded wood mulch.
Enjoy your autumn
landscape. |