Fall Planting

It's early fall. We're home from vacation, Oliver is back in school, the temperatures are cooling as the days are growing shorter. It's time for me to take all my photos, all my notes from the garden this past spring and summer and put ideas into action for next year. I spent a lot of time last year moving things around, breaking things apart and using what we had. This year it's now time to mix things up and fill in the gaps with new things to add visual interest and more variety.

Here's my garden to-do list for September:

• Mailbox garden: moody blues veronica (the spiky kind)
• Front garden bed by stairs: creeping phlox
• Shade garden: coral huechera, black huechera, purple huechera for visual interest and color 
• Need to add on to the sunny right garden bed: 3 tall perennials (black eyed susans, echinachea, delphinium) , 6 short ones (2 phlox, 2 hardy geraniums, bergen's veronica (creeping kind), butterfly scabiosa) to fill in the gaps
• Under dogwood: add aster, creeping phlox
• Under fringe tree: add aster, creeping phlox 
• Under crepe myrtle tree: add firewitch dianthus
• Add more tulip bulbs all over for spring
• Need to fill in iris area, I'm starting with 3 more 
• Add a few lupines in the back by fence to fill in tall gaps (lots of blanks there)
• Transplant another anenome piece to the left bed (between asparagus and blackberry)
• Move the unhappy astilbe over to left bed in a shady spot under the tree

Lots of color and new textures! And these will span different seasons as well. Phlox, tulips, irises and lupines in the spring. Veronica, geraniums, scabiosa, dianthus, black eyed susans and echinachea in the summer and into the fall when the asters will bloom.


Notes for October:

1. Mark where I want the dahlias to go next year so there won't be any guess work next spring (I am going to use stakes)
2. Sort the dahlia bulbs by short and tall into two bags so I don't have to guess next spring (this was a big mistake throwing them all in two big bags unmarked.

Notes for next spring:

1. Consider another honeysuckle for the pergola (like this pink one), I really like the one climbing up the obelisk and some can grow 20 feet tall
2. Plant more alyssum - it was a great filler!
3. Start 2 blanket flowers from seed for front yard 
4. Start 1 butterfly weed for backyard (left side)
5. Start 2 new black eyed susan vines for next year - they aren't blooming this year but I really like the green vines for the trellis.

For the pots:

• The petunias and dianthus did great in the backyard and in the bigger pots, but they did terrible in the rail boxes out front 
• The snapdragons, coleus and polka dot plants also did amazing this year everywhere
• The alyssum filled in nicely everywhere but became leggy in the pots
• The calibrachoa did terrible and all died from blight within 2 weeks
• These pretty orange flowers I had started off great but lost all their leaves halfway through
• The dahlias did surprisingly well in pots - can definitely do again