8 Perennials for Great Fall Colour

Out here on the prairie, trees have been relegated to cities, cities and river bottoms. Stand upon a bluff overlooking the Missouri River valley in eastern Nebraska, and the tree color is magnificent well into late October and early November. If you squint just tough enough and trick back some warm apple cider, then you would think it was New England. But the prairie is the point where the genuine color is at, and not simply in the many ornamental fishes such as little bluestem (rusty reds) or prairie dropseed (oranges and yellows). No, much the perennial flowers, long completed flowering, put on one hell of a series which could easily compete with the finest Vermont has to offer you. Listed below are a few plants that will give you an added dimension every autumn for years to come.

Benjamin Vogt / Monarch Gardens

Perennials that have lovely fall foliage give the landscape a carpet of colour that matches the canopy in the trees over. This mix of low colour and high colour will give you the feeling of being surrounded by a rainbow every autumn (or being trapped at a Skittles commercial). The trick for the best colour punch is to mass the perennials, which have a tendency to be smaller in height, airier and less full than a tree. Take, for example, Hubricht’s bluestar (Amsonia hubrichtii, USDA zones 4 to 9), which in turn generates a cloud of glowing yellow, then orange, then finally a rusty brown before defoliating. It’s about 3 feet tall and wide, prefers full sunlight and moderate to dry soil, and has bright blue flowers in late spring.

Benjamin Vogt / Monarch Gardens

Sedum is a superb autumn color perennial, as well as the cultivar ‘Autumn Joy’ has dependable golden hues. You will find floor cover sedums that get orange and bright red, and since they’re a succulent, they’re easy to replicate — just snap a stem and put it in the soil; in a few years you are going to have a great specimen. Many sedums like dry to moderate soil in full to partial sun, and they’re a terrific nectar source for pollinating insects.

Benjamin Vogt / Monarch Gardens

I’m a big milkweed urge, since monarch butterflies, fighting with alarmingly low population numbers these previous two decades, put their eggs only on milkweed. This is Asclepias incarnata, swamp milkweed, and it enjoys full sunlight in moist to moderate soil, growing to 3 feet tall and 1 foot to 2 feet wide. In this picture it’s glowing orange, but last season it was red, orange, yellow and green all at one time. As with trees, I’m certain environmental factors such as rain and temperature determine the colour from year to year.

Benjamin Vogt / Monarch Gardens

A popular nectar plant for butterflies when it’s blooming, Liatris ligulistylis places on one of the most impressive displays for perennials — would not you agree? It enjoys full sun in moderate to moist soils, reaching 3 to 4 ft tall and 1 foot to 2 feet wide, flourishing in mid- to late summer. Other Liatris species also do well with autumn color, which range from umbers and rusts to pure yellows, so that you can not fail with Liatris.

Benjamin Vogt / Monarch Gardens

I’m very into American senna for many reasons. Senna hebecarpa has a long bloom period in summertime, well over a month, bringing many bees and pollinating flies with its yellowish flowers. Since the seed heads develop, they stretch and become superfuzzy, and in winter inside their black slides. But the autumn color is damn neat, too, with yellows and oranges glowing in the late-afternoon sunlight. American senna gets about 4 to 5 ft tall and wide and enjoys medium to moist soil in full sun. This is one recurrent that you don’t have to mass for autumn color, due to its shrub-like size.

Benjamin Vogt / Monarch Gardens

There are numerous more flowering perennials out there with amazing autumn colour, plants such as the floor cover Prairie Smoke (Geum triflorum),that places on glowing reds; geraniums at rainbows of crayon box colours; balloon flowers which get as yellow as telephone books; much Joe Pye Weed, ironweed and asters will continue gifting colour late into the year after they have gone to seed. When the leaves fall, do not forget to enjoy the brand new carpet draping your backyard’s flooring. I’m telling you our backyard plants can give us way more than simply a few weeks of colour when they’re blooming if we are open to their entire three-season potential.

Your turn: What perennials give you some neat autumn foliage color?

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