With autumn just around the corner and waking up to single digit temperatures this morning I thought it was high time to go on a fall photo shoot. I’ll be joining Jim at Garden Ruminations, and no doubt many other gardeners around the world, showcasing fall colours today — hopefully some spring things from Down Under as well!
Here in Canada, when you mention fall flowers, you immediately think of Chrysanthemums in red, orange, yellow and, in my case, white. This is a hardy perennial variety; I cut it back by half in June so that the stems stayed short.
Not a flower but also white, the berries on this Symphoricarpos (snowberry) bush are plump and juicy looking. Birds don’t seem to go for them though, until the dead of winter when there’s not much else to be found…
I look forward every year to seeing giant Colchicum flowers pop out of the ground…it’s like spring all over again when they show up, except with the knowledge that days and nights are about to get very cold and dark instead of the opposite…
Not a fall flower per se, but enjoying the cool nights, it seems, is this annual with an unknown name (…anyone??) that I plopped into a small clay pot back in May. Although some insect is intent on eating away the flower petals it’s really at its best right now.
The yellow flower has had a place on a raised bed corner in the kitchen garden all summer… also in that raised bed is a fabulous hot pepper that’s really pretty right now. Next to it is another raised bed with this columnar basil… quite an unsung hero, I think, as it’s the best looking basil I’ve ever grown, and the leaves have a quite spicy kick to them while retaining the traditional basil flavour.
Finally, the most autumnal flower of them all, and such a pollinator magnet around here, New England Asters – Symphyotrichum novae-angliae. They’re everywhere in the countryside, along roadsides and throughout my garden. I gave many the Chelsea Chop in June so that they’re a bit shorter than normal without some of the ugly naked legs that are so good at pushing their flowers high, to hover above meadow grasses in the wild. Here’s a large patch at the bottom of my main kitchen garden bed, interspersed with white wood asters that also are flowering with rampant joy and abandon right now. Have a great last weekend of summer, everyone!
That basil tower is amazing! I assume you eat from it, yet it keeps growing. There are some beautiful chilies too—which must be very hot, I imagine; what variety are they?
Great variety! The Snowberries look like little eggs! My Colchicum has a flower & a 2nd is growing. The yellow is Bidens aka Fern-leaved Beggartick. They last a long time. I have an orange & a beautiful pink one. Impressive Basil ‘bush!’…I need to freeze leaves, very soon.asters are lovely…I bought a small one last week. Enjoy the wonderful weather.
Lots of late season colour! 🤩 👏🏼
Single digits? We still have triple digits; it would be great if we could average them out!
Your pretty yellow plant looks to be Cosmos sulphureus, which can thrive up into the Great Lakes area and upper New York, so it makes sense that it would be doing the same for you. Of course, I still have immense difficulty sort out yellow flowers in the aster family, so that’s only a casual guess.