Garden Bloggers’ Design Workshop – The Garden in Fall

Thanks (as usual) to Nan at Gardening Gone Wild for hosting this month’s workshop.

Fall in the garden is horribly underrated.

Here in the Northeast, we take for granted the foliar onslaught that draws tourists from around the world to see what a temperate deciduous forest does naturally as winter approaches.

While some gardeners whine about the lack of interest as fall approaches, I revel in the occasional success of my own devices and ingenuity — if you can call it that. Wasn’t I smart to plant those ornamental grasses? Don’t the bittersweet berries brighten up the fog? That hybrid hazelnut colors up so well, doesn’t it?

But mostly, the attraction of the fall garden here is that nature takes over. From the broad swaths of goldenrod in late August through the first frosts to the last of the October color, the highlights here are not of my own making.

This place was breathtaking in fall long before I came here, and will be breathtaking after I’m gone.

Fall scene a few years ago.
fall scene

Fred runs by the ridge.
fall pix

Bittersweet berries and borrowed scenery.
fall pix

Ligularia seedhead.
fall pix

Color on campus: ivy on concrete outside the bookstore …
fall pix

… Libe slope …
fall pix

… and Japanese maple outside Plant Science Building.
fall pix

Favorite fall flower: Japanes anemones.

fall pix


fall pix

Frost on Asian pear.
fall pic

Pitcher plant in the water garden.
fall pix

Polygonatum odoratum variegatum turning.
fall pix

September bloom day scan.

fall pix

Frost on grasses, joe-pye weed, veggie garden fence.
fall pix

Grasses in the morning light.
fall pix

September morn’.

fall pix