Late Bloomers
Late Bloomers
Fall is coming and even though it is late in the season for plants, it is a wonderful time to refresh the garden by bringing in autumn colors to your landscape. Fall is a wonderful time for flowering plants, and the most important time of the year for our pollinators. The pollinators are gathering their food reserves, so adding these five fall blooms to your garden will surely brighten the garden and satisfy our pollinator friends.
1. Aster – This plant is herbaceous, deer resistant and native to most North America. Their sun exposure is full sun to part sun. The plant can be used in several areas of the garden such as borders, rock gardens, wildflower gardens. They will attract butterflies to your garden.
2. Japanese Anemone – Japanese anemones are such a beautiful flower. Each flower is elegant, paper-like bloom and is best in planted in partial shade. It can get 4-5′ tall and 3-4′ wide. The soft pink flowers brighten up a shady garden. Pair them with dark green evergreens for a nice contrast and plant with spring bloomers their branching stems will cover the declining leaves of spring plants. Every time my Japanese Anemone blooms it always warms heart even though I know winter is near.
3. Coreopsis – This is one of the longest bloomers, coreopsis offers a daisy like bloom in a lively yellow fashion. Coreopsis is native to American prairies, is low maintenance prefers ample sunlight and well drained soil. Coreopsis is an important flower is it so beneficial for many pollinators.
4. Plumbago – I personally love Plumbago because of its color of deep blue flowers. You just do not get a lot of blue colors in flowers, so for me this is fun. It makes a wonderful ground cover and has a long lasting bloom time. It can be planted in full sun to partial shade.
5. Gaura – This pink dense thickets of slim, upright stems are going strong in fall. In Colorado it is more of annual than a perennial (so chances are it wont come back next year). Mixing annuals with perennials is a great idea for the season because you have such color consistently. Gaura thrives in full sun, drought tolerant and very easy to maintain.
As you can see mum’s are not our only choice for fall blooming. Have fun revamping your garden and enjoy the pollinators as they stop by to thank you!