Most people see the fall as a time to clean up flowerbeds and prepare for winter. That may be true, but it can also be an opportunity to add and renew the color to your outdoor décor.
With the right plant selection, you can have a second influx of color around your home just as the leaves on most of your trees start to change color! Consult the Avant Garden Décor fall flower container gardening guide for some great ideas on fall flowers for your coco baskets, flower pots, and flower boxes.
More Tips for Fall Flowers
Maintaining your fall flowers may seem tricky, but here are a few tips to get the most from your late-season beauties:
- Try deadheading flowers to prolong the fall blooming period.
- If you have a plant designated as tropical, be patient with it. The plant may require more time to mature and bloom if you aren’t in the ideal plant hardiness zone.
- Water plants sparingly through the early fall. When the leaves on your trees drop, this is a signal to give your annuals, shrubs, and remaining plants one more deep watering before winter. After that, allow these plants to go dormant.
- Looking for even more late-season ideas? Some perennials that reach their peak late in the year include ligularia, snakeroot, anise hyssop, purple coneflower, and rudbeckias. Some of the best long-blooming annuals are geraniums, petunias, marigolds, and daturas.
Here are a few more tidbits on the flowers we’ve featured in the “9 Fall Flowers for a Stunning Container Garden” infographic.
- Mums are great plants for hanging baskets! For the best results, consult with your garden center and buy a cultivar with a bloom that lasts a bit longer than your first frost.
- Pansies are the perfect plant for beginning gardeners. To keep them blooming, simply remove spent flower heads. Fall-planted pansies are even known to survive mild winters!
- Verbena has a long-lasting bloom that can reach deep into the fall. The key to consistent blooming is to provide it with an inch of water per week and regular trimming.
- Camellias originally came from East Asia and thrive well in shade. These shrubs do well in containers and will bloom from November through April. If treated right, these hardy plants can grow up to 8 feet tall!
- Celosia is also called cockscomb thanks to its masses of soft, feathery plumes. If you want to produce more plumes, pinch back the first one, which spurs branching.
- Black-eyed Susans will bloom through the early fall. If you remove blooms as they wither, you help the plant conserve nutrients for use with the remaining blooms.
- Sedum has fleshy succulent leaves topped by flowers of pink, red, yellow or white. There are varieties that will grow as tall as 2 feet high and others that top out at a mere 2 inches tall.
- Aster flowers bring a beautiful purple to fall settings. When watering these easy-to-care-for plants, avoid splashing the foliage. Doing so can invite powdery mildew to take hold of the plant.
- Nasturtium is the ultimate flowering plant for the plant-it-and-forget-it gardener. They don’t require fertilizer, can survive mild drought conditions and still produce beautiful flowers.