Fall Container Garden Plants That Extend Your Gorgeous Flower Gardening Season
Are you watching your yard drift into muted autumn colors and remembering that last year you thought you should add brighter plants? You can certainly buy and plant trees and shrubs that will make a big splash in the future, but you could also add potted plants for a bright look immediately.
Below are some colorful cold-tolerant plant possibilities.
Fall Foliage Plants
Heucheras, coral bells, have large intensely colored leaves and are cold-tolerant (They are evergreen where winters are mild.) Put three or more pots with leaves of color you love in a cluster; wow! So bright!
Bergenias are another great choice. They have spectacular flowers in spring, but for fall use them for their plum, bronze,or scarlet leaves, which remain striking into winter.
Blue-flowered plumbagos, Ceratostigma, will bloom well into fall, then the leaves turn from green to red or burgundy. Several pots will provide a nice blast of color.
A pot full of hens-and-chickens, Sempervivum, chosen for the brightly colored succulent leaves that suit your design, will stay bright as winter approaches, often turning even more intense shades as the temperatures drop.
Likewise, stonecrops, sedums, come in bright red, orange and maroon foliage, so pots make fine color splashes in the garden. Quite cold-tolerant, the color accent will persist into winter.
Cold Tolerant Perennials & Annuals
These plants will continue to flower even as temperatures drop and drop:
Pansies, in fact violets of all types and sizes, are cold tolerant and will bloom profusely up to a really hard frost. They come in colors from deep purple, blue, red, yellow, and white and combinations. Whatever color accent you want, pansies can provide it. If the flowers are small, mass several pots, maybe set the back one a little higher than the rest, for a fine focal point.
Lavenders, Lavendula, are beautiful plants with lovely purple (lavender) flowers and a famous fragrance. They are cold-hardy and will bloom on and on into the fall. Set several in front of an evergreen for striking contrast.
Coreopsis or tickseed, with yellow or red or maroon flowers, will, especially if dead flowers are removed and they have adequate water, flower continuously until it gets very cold.
Hardy iceplants, Delosperma, have bright purple or pink flowers and a long flowering season that takes them into winter.
You might also try hybrid oreganos, origanums. Quite cold tolerant, they will go on flowering even when it is quite cool. The flowers range from the original purple to pinks and yellows.
Osteospermum bloom as temperatures begin to warm in spring after a cold, but not freezing, winter. Most osteospermum can tolerate colder temperatures, in the high 30°F range, without issue.
These flowers can take your patio containers and garden into the fall with beautiful blooms that withstand cooler temps: calendula, marigolds, nasturtiums, rudbeckias, and zinnias. All of these can be simply set out in a pot and, just like that, your garden will have bright autumn colors.
You can transplant these plants into the soil, but often transplanting reduces flowering, so for this fall’s color, leave them in the pots. To enhance the survival of the plants to next spring, as it turns really cold transplant them into the ground or bring the pots indoors. Flower pots are not as insulated as the ground and it is easy to freeze the roots of potted plants, killing them. Indoors or out, in the ground or in a pot, remember to water them regularly, even though it is winter.
