The color of fall

Autumn crocus

The color of fall is gold and orange and yellow and brown and tan, right?

Well, someone forgot to tell my garden about this color scheme.

Here in my garden, we are enjoying purples and pinks and whites, and they look wonderful in the glow of a partly sunny, cool autumn afternoon.

Walk with me through the garden and let’s take a look.

First up, let’s kneel down and see the autumn crocus, Crocus speciosus, starting to bloom.

Its blooms won’t open on cloudy days, so  we’ll have to come back when the sun is shining to see the gold of its stamens.

It echoes the colors of the asters blooming nearby in Plopper’s Field, where I plop in flowers wherever there is a bare spot.  Did I tell you I recently plopped in another shrub clematis?  I’ll tell you more about that some other day.

Asters in Plopper’s Field

These passalong asters bloom in several sections of the garden and are over five feet tall. They really add a lot of pizzazz to the garden in the fall, more than making up for the months of “plain green tall things” that they are for most of the summer.

Back in the vegetable garden, I have some clean up to do.  But there are some flowers to enjoy amongst the dried up corn stalks and okra plants gone wild.   This clematis is one I ended up whacking back about six weeks ago when I was clearing the area by the fence.

Clematis re-bloomed

It decided to grow right back and bloom for me in a lovely soft pink color.

The alyssum is at its peak now.

Alyssum is a good annual ground cover for the veg garden

I would love for it to naturalize a bit in the garden and so will let it go to seed this fall.

Nearby, in the garden bed I call The Shrubbery, a dwarf butterfly bush is still putting out purple blooms which is good because there are still lots of butterflies about.

Move over butterfly bush, I want to sit there

I planted it here by the chairs because it is supposed to have a lovely scent.  I don’t think it has that much scent, but its a nice idea to put scented plants near where you will be sitting so you can smell them.

Another clematis decided to send out a few new blooms along the edge of another garden bed called Woodland Follies.

White clematis

This clematis grows up through a bayberry shrub, Myrica pensylvanica.  Bayberry is a nice shrub for winter interest because it keeps its leaves on until spring.

Across the way, some tall verbena, Verbena bonariensis, blooms half hidden behind some shrubs.

Verbena bonariensis

Like most gardeners, I let the verbena go to seed and self sow a bit in the garden. It doesn’t really turn into a thug and then late in the growing season you get these purplish-pink flowers.

I hope you enjoyed this tour of the garden and are re-thinking your own fall colors now.  Fall is yellow and orange and gold and brown, but it is also purple and pink and white.