Make fall even more memorable
By: Garden Gate staff
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Plenty of late-season interest
Keep your garden colorful until frost! The September photo at left shows just how great some plants can look even at the end of the season.
Shades of red and yellow are classic fall hues, but they don’t always have to come from the leaves on your trees. Salvia, melampodium and cutleaf staghorn sumac provide autumn color at ground level.
This cutleaf staghorn sumac doesn’t have flowers or fruit, but the foliage puts on quite a show. Golden leaves in spring turn chartreuse in summer, and develop shades of orange and yellow in fall.
Blood flower blooms from early summer through fall, which is great for hungry hummingbirds and butterflies. Besides feeding on the nectar, monarch and queen butterflies lay their eggs on the foliage.
To find out more about these plants, just click ahead!
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Combo recipe
Give this group of plants full sun, well-drained soil and regular moisture, and they’ll bloom well. A slow-release fertilizer incorporated at planting time is usually sufficient to keep annuals blooming through summer. But if you notice that flowering is slowing down or leaves are turning yellow, a second application scratched into the soil — usually midsummer — helps.
Avoid bloom-booster type formulas for annuals growing in the ground, though. These foods are high in phosphorous, which is already plentiful in the soil — adding more might cause plants to get leggy.
A – Tiger Eyes® (‘Bailtiger’) cutleaf staghorn sumac (Rhus typhina) Shrub; green-yellow flowers in summer, orange and yellow foliage in fall; full sun; 3 to 6 ft. tall and wide; cold-hardy in USDA zones 4 to 8, heat-tolerant in AHS zones 8 to 1
B – Derby® melampodium (Melampodium divaricatum) Annual; yellow flowers summer through fall; full sun; 12 to 24 in. tall, 9 to 12 in. wide; heat-tolerant in AHS zones 12 to 1
C – Blood flower (Asclepias curassavica) Tender perennial; yellow, red and orange flowers summer to fall; full sun to part shade; 2 to 3 ft. tall, 1 to 2 ft. wide; cold-hardy in USDA zones 9 to 11, heat-tolerant in AHS zones 12 to 1
D – ‘Lady in Red’ Texas sage (Salvia coccinea) Tender perennial; red flowers summer to fall; full sun; 24 to 36 in. tall, 12 to 14 in. wide; cold-hardy in USDA zones 9 to 10, heat-tolerant in AHS zones 12 to 1
E – ‘Ruby Parfait’ wheat celosia (Celosia) Tender perennial; pink flowers summer to fall; full sun; 24 to 26 in. tall, 12 to 15 in. wide; cold-hardy in USDA zones 10 to 11, heat-tolerant in AHS zones 12 to 1
F – Serenita™ White angelonia (Angelonia angustifolia) Tender perennial; white blooms summer to fall; full sun; 12 to 14 in. tall and wide; cold-hardy in USDA zones 9 to 11, heat-tolerant in AHS zones 12 to 1
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