The Rise of Fall Gardening

By
• LINDSEY TAYLOR

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Meredith Heuer

THE LATE SHOW | This shot of garden designer Grace Kennedy’s Garrison, N.Y., property—showcasing a border of Monarda ‘Raspberry Wine’ and echinachea—was taken last year at the end of September.

Interactive: Fall Palettes

A color guide to plants that are in flower when the leaves are turning. Ms. Kennedy shares two of her favorite late-season palettes.

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Meredith Heuer (2)

Click to view the interactive

“MAYBE IT’S BECAUSE I’m a procrastinator, or maybe it’s because I love the bittersweet quality, the light and the cooler temperatures, but I’ve always embraced the decay and the musky, earthy smells that are synonymous with fall,” said Grace Kennedy, a garden designer based in Garrison, N.Y., who considers autumn the standout season of the year.

Most novice gardeners don’t see it that way. Once Labor Day hits, they resignedly watch their success stories fade and start to say goodbye to the flowers they’ve nurtured. But for Ms. Kennedy, the growing cycle is just beginning then. “Some wonderful plants peak once the hot weather subsides,” she said. She tells her clients with evangelical zeal how alive a fall garden can be if you plan for it—with late-blooming perennials providing color (see interactive), plumes of ornamental grasses swaying in the welcomed breezes and fruit and berries attracting voracious wildlife. In the Northeast, where summers can be oppressive, a fall garden can flourish a good three months before it finally succumbs to the first hard frost.

Ms. Kennedy, whose own spread blooms into late November, typically brings a bucket load of cut flowers—cosmos, zinnias, sunflowers, foxgloves—to her parents for Thanksgiving. Her belief that fall can be a time of floral abundance was shaped, she said, by a book she read early in her career, Rosemary Verey’s “The Garden in Winter,” which argues that “off” seasons are fair game and should be factored into a garden plan.

Some clients have struggled to see things her way, but lately there’s been a shift, she said, and both newer and more established clients are coming to her with ideas on lengthening the season. “There’s a trend toward edibles,” said Ms. Kennedy, “but also an interest in ecosystems. Clients are seeing the garden as an active system that provides and feeds in addition to looking good.” Shrubs like elderberry or beautyberry, for instance, both nourish and shelter birds.

Other professional gardeners have long been playing with plant selections to dramatically extend the longevity of their flora display. William Wallace at Wave Hill, a public garden in New York City, fills its beds with late-blooming salvias, like Salvia leucantha, which starts flowering in late September, and Salvia mexicana ‘Limelight,’ whose blue flowers sprout out of chartreuse bracts. He also likes to weave in asters and garden mums, and has started leaving seed heads on plants through the winter and adding more grasses to the flower beds to give them textural interest and a modern, unstuffy sophistication—a trend that’s catching on elsewhere too.

“Add ornamental grasses to fall flower beds to give them a modern, unstuffy sophistication.”

To extend your own garden into fall, Ms. Kennedy recommends working some late bloomers and ornamental grasses into existing beds or, if space allows, dedicating a whole border to plants that flourish in autumn. When it comes to grasses, she particularly likes Calamagrostis and Carex varieties, as well as little bluestem. Meanwhile, her favorite perennials include Vernonia (ironweed), a tall native plant, riveting to butterflies, that can reach a height of 7 feet when it hits its stride in late August. She shares Mr. Wallace’s love of asters and salvia, along with dahlias and agastache (hummingbird mint), whose seed heads reliably seduce gold finches.

Though many people assume that gardens should be planted in spring, fall is actually a great time to shop for plants and get them in the ground. Nurseries often have sales, and you can see the autumn bloomers at their peak, so you’ll know what you’re getting.

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A version of this article appeared August 31, 2013, on page D4 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: It’saFallWorldAfter All.