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September
Plants
Try to
remember
The kind
of September
When life
was slow
And oh, so mellow
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Warm, sunny days, cool evening
air heavy with the musty scent of ripening corn and
clover, pink-ripe watermelons, buckets of tomatoes,
the first red-tinged apples from the orchard, and
the evening symphonies of crickets and cicadas.
Perhaps its just the shorter days, but life always
seems to slow down a bit when September rolls
around.
September is the month when
summer changes to fall, but in a Wyobraska
landscape, September does not need to mean the end
of the garden’s summertime show. Many of our best
landscape and garden plants are late bloomers, which
is to say that they grow and develop gradually
through the summer and then bloom sometime from mid
to late summer before taking on their fall and
winter form and color. Most of these plants will
also tolerate the occasional early light frost that
sometimes shows up in Wyobraska in September without
losing any of their visual appeal. In fact, for
some of these plants a light frost often improves
their September look by adding an early hint of fall
foliage color to the ongoing summertime show of
flowers.
Most autumns will find these
September plants blooming right into the fall
foliage display of the trees and shrubs in the
landscape, making for fall gardens that few regions
of the country can match.
Not too surprisingly, many of
the best September plants are ornamental grasses and
perennials. These are plants that prefer to grow in
a climate with a dependable and high quality
summertime growing season with lots of bright
sunshine. As a result these September plants often
get as big as many common shrubs, and one of the
keys to using them successfully in your garden or
landscape is to remember to give them plenty of
room. Also on the list of September plants are
some excellent native and adapted shrubs, and a few
unusual annuals.
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Previous Articles
It's
Finally Spring - March 13
Spring Garden Calendar-March 20
No
Garden Left Behind-March 27
Planting Trees for a Cooler Earth in a Warmer
WyoBraska-April 3
Viburnums - Shrubs for Wyobraska Springs-April 10
Want A Water Conserving Lawn? You might already have
one-
April 17
Creating Long
Term
Tree-lationships April 24
Bigger, Bolder, Brighter,
Better—and Back In The Landscape May 01 & 08
Hardy Shrub
Roses
May 15
Another Look
at Native Plants
May 22
No Child
Left Inside
May 29
June
is Tree Care Month June 05
Summer Blooming Shrubs
June 12
Roses Are
Red.....
June 19
The Plants They will be Talking About Next Year at
the Garden Walk
June 26
Busy Summertime Gardens
July 03
Cutting Your Lawn Down to Size
July 10
July 17
Insect Paranoia
If It Will Grow In Wyoming...
July 24
Rain Gardens
July31
WyoBraska Native Grass & Wildflower Lawn
August 7
A Real WyoBraska Peach?
(Fruit Trees) August 14
Fall is for Planting
August 21
A Recipe for Enjoying Autumn Landscapes August 28
Seeing Red in your Landscape
September 4
Four Questions to Ask A Plant
September 11
2007 Articles
2006 Articles |
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Big Blue Stem—Give this plant room to grow and
by late September it will be 6 feet tall, with its
foliage turning its characteristic maroon fall and
winter color. September and October are its best
months. The color fades slowly to reddish brown
through the winter, but it’s a pleasure to watch
this plant move in the winter wind.
Little Blue Stem—Another
native grass. It is shorter than big bluestem,
reaching only 3 foot in height. Too much water can
make this plant flop, so it’s an excellent xeriscape
plant. As with its larger cousin, September and
October are its prime months.
Hardy Hibiscus—Wyobraska
gardeners are discovering the hardy hibiscus. There
are numerous cultivars of this plant now in the
nursery trade. I think that the pink and red
blooming ones are showiest in a late summer garden,
but if you’re a “white person”, white-flowered
versions are also available. Hibiscus don’t offer a
lot after a hard frost, so I like to locate them in
places that aren’t primary winter views.
Fall Asters—Like fall
mums, only better. Some can spread a little
aggressively, but equally aggressive spring clean up
to thin and shrink the planting seems to keep them
under control. September Ruby is one of my
favorites—it’s a big plant, reaching three feet in
height, but it stays in a nice tight clump for many
years. Asters are available in pink, red, blue, and
purple.
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Monkshood (Anicontium)—is a tall perennial
that prefers some shade. It’s an attractive upright
clump of foliage throughout the summer, and you may
wonder if it’s ever going to bloom. Bud buds appear
atop the stems in mid-September that open to a
beautiful blue delphinium-like flower in late
September. They often last into October and make a
great companion plant to the fall color of
serviceberry or black chokeberry.
Tall Sedums—For the
rusty red and pink fall colors of mums, with the
added feature of great early winter interest, the
tall sedums are unequalled. Autumn Joy is the best
known cultivar, but five or six other cultivars,
some with purplish colored stems have proven
dependable performers in Wyobraska gardens. These
are September no-brainers.
Shrub Roses—I just can’t
say enough about the growing selection of shrub
roses. Tear out those tired old lilacs,
cotoneasters, spireas, and barberries in your
landscape and replace them with one or more of the
50 or so varieties of shrub roses that have been
proven to thrive in Wyobraska landscapes. Remember,
these are not the hybrid tea roses that need to be
pampered and protected through the winter. These
are winter hardy shrubs, with rose type flowers,
with all of the other ornamental qualities of
shrubs—berries, fall foliage color, and a wide
variety of sizes and shapes. Most of the shrub
roses are blooming as colorfully in September as
they are in June.
Rabbit Brush—If you’re
xeriscaping, this is one plant you want to have
somewhere in your landscape. It’s extremely drought
tolerant—actually is prettier when it doesn’t get
too much water. In late August or early September
it is covered with yellow flowers—making it look
like a giant mum. For an added bonus the light
gray-green foliage retains its color into the
winter. I recommend the dwarf blue rabbit brush.
The standard green form can get quite large.
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