Fall Into Gardening
By Kelly, Your Local Nursery Expert
The hard right turn into autumn brings unmistakable shifts. It’s not like the stutter-start into false spring or the mild summer that never really felt like it began this year.
The autumn signals are clear: squirrels join the cause to plant a million trees, cross orb weavers tack up perfect webs, brisk mornings are followed by hot afternoon sweater regret, and fresh eyes see long shadows in softening light on the buildings downtown.
That gentle golden light can blend the colors of a flower with the complementary hues of a butterfly in truly memorable ways, a portrait of the changing season.
The soft tones of fall’s light bring colorful illumination to marigolds and a glowing a butterfly, transient and on the wing of the season
In the garden, now is the ideal time to plant trees, shrubs, and flowering perennials—it’s like giving plants a head start for spring.
The ambient temperature is still warm enough for root growth, so new plants have a chance to get settled in before late winter rains revive the soil and spring fever breaks.
The only drawback I’ve found to planting in fall isn’t about planting, it’s about finding the plants. Most growers carefully time crops to sell plants when they are blooming or in their prime, limiting the year-round availability of certain plants.
Radiant, translucent Chinese Lantern flowers highlight the foreground as rich red and white cyclamen flowers, so hearty in fall and winter, show their colorful richness. Both are perennials and great to plant this time of year.
It’s a reminder that the seasons are still more powerful than any demand for a particular plant. Yes, you can buy a pint of supermarket strawberries in December, but you would have a difficult time finding a cyclamen plant for sale in July.
This will probably be true until Amazon figures out how to sell live plants.
In this timeline, where everything is available to us all the time, it’s refreshing to observe the gradual, powerful, cyclical changes of nature and put that planting spade and green thumb of yours to work in the crisp autumn air and golden hues of light.
