Fall is often the time used to get a perennial garden ready for the next season, but it does not have to be the end of the garden year. There can be plenty of color options for fall-blooming flowers in the garden when summer is over.
Fall blooming perennials have the entire growing season to get ready, so many of them are tall and stately. Many fall bloomers are in the seasonal colors of deep purples, rusts, scarlet and gold.
A lot of gardeners seem to miss out on fall flowers, perhaps because garden centers tend to emphasize spring and summer bloomers during their peak plant selling seasons. If you plan your garden well, fall blooming perennials can provide some of the best blooming shows, almost like a second spring.
The trick is to select some of the better fall blooming plants and extend the season of earlier bloomers. Extend the season of most plants simply be deadheading. Keep cutting off spent flowers helps repeat blooms. Also, if the foliage starts to look stretched or pitiful, cut it back by a third or more to stimulate a flush of new growth and blooms.
Fall blooming or foliage plants include - artemisia, aster, brugmansia, coreopsis, echinacea, some hemerocallis and hosta, garden phlox, rudbeckia, scabiosa and sedum.
