The Late Season Garden

We could observe that it is relatively easy to have a floriferous and bountiful high summer garden and very often our plant choices reflect this. I think this is partially because we are trained by garden centers and magazine images to buy plants in bloom for immediate gratification, as if flowers were the only important component of a plant or of a garden. I also think that as Labor Day comes around, the rhythm of our gardening year changes significantly. We just might be "over it" and looking to the autumn color in our tree canopy to suffice as we wend our way to winter. Some of us like to do a lot of outdoor "cleaning" at this time of year (I will try to talk you out of most of this in some future blog posts). But how about this, too - afternoon light in a fall garden is magical and it reveals strong, emotional qualities in plants which are otherwise obscured in the high sun of summer.

This list comprises late-summer-to-fall blooming perennials and other plants that look interesting as they are winding down, and may continue to look good standing in the winter. Major components of a late season garden are grasses, berried shrubs, trees with interesting bark, late bloomers such as asters and goldenrods (many of which can be selectively cut back earlier in the season to increase the length of time they provide bloom in the garden), plants with attractive and engaging leaf color, shape, pattern, or twig color even after their flowering period has past, and plants that senesce, or go into dormancy, in beautiful ways, both to the benefit of insects and to the beauty of your snow covered plot. 

Besides visual joy for the gardener, fall blooms offer much appreciated late pollen and nectar. And many plants offer seeds and berries for mammals and birds. Hollow stems and the crowns of grasses, and artful piles of debris are shelter for our overwintering fauna. I view my fall garden as a complete and different experience that gradually disappears as the season progresses. There is a whole different palette and structure to the garden as it is winding down. Clarity is recaptured in the spring through judicious chopping-and-dropping, and pulling back dead material to reveal awakening plants pushing through the soil. The design term used is "season extension" which is much too quotidian for what a well grown, late summer/into fall/into winter garden can be. In particular, my late season garden involves the fourth dimension - time, potent and bittersweet - as a significant design element right along with color, shape, repetition, layering, and texture.