Transitioning Containers Into The Fall Season
As we continue our transition into the Fall season, Spring and Summer annuals begin looking tired and worn. You can add a touch of fall to any container or pot by adding several different options. Your entryway represents you, and can even lead guests to the front door. Therefore it’s important to have your porch pots and window boxes looking nice. You can achieve this with the help of Fall blooming, foliage plants, and plants that can even last through the winter. This blog will give you plenty of different options on transitioning containers into the Fall season.
Designing Containers
To add a splash of Fall color you can mix and match with different colors and different patterns of foliage. With any pot you want to have a thriller, a filler, and a spiller or a low growing plant. A thriller is considered a tall, full plant. A filler is a plant to fill the space, but smaller than our thriller and finally a spiller to spill over the side of your pot or another low growing plant would also be nice.
In this case, a mum would make a nice thriller. Having a mum would add a nice, classic, Fall look with a variety of different colors to mimic the season’s warm tones. Although mums only last a few months, they are relatively inexpensive and are more than likely to come back year after year, due to our climate. You could pair a mum with a combination of plants. Some of our favorites would be to pair your mums with ornamental cabbages, peppers, and kale. Also, to add a bit of excitement, you could add a few pumpkins and gourds. Another quick idea is to pile pumpkins on top of one another for an effortless look. Ornamental cabbages, kale, and peppers last all the way until frost. Another option would be to pair mums and pansies or even violas. We even have trailing Wave pansies so that could even be considered your spiller.
Plant Choices
Here at Willow Ridge Garden Center we carry a wide variety of small evergreens which are perfect for pots, containers, or even window boxes. They are very slow growing, so in order to get instant gratification plant them close enough together they the foliage is almost touching. One of our favorites is an Emerald Arborvitae it offers cone shaped verticality to the back side of your pot. There are many different shades of evergreens from light to dark. You can pair the different tints of evergreens together or go for a look, such as adding textures such as ferns, grasses, or even Heuchera. A few of our favorite grasses are Carex Evercolor Everest, and many different shades of Mondo grass. Heuchera also add a nice year round foliage. Fall colored Heuchera include Cinnamon Curls, Silver Scrolls, or Forever Purple. If you’re going for a more evergreen look, try out a Palace Purple, Pretty Pistachio, or Peppermint Spice Heuchera. Add Chocolate Chip Carpet Bugle or Burgundy Glow Bugleweed to break away from a stand style leaf. Use variegated English Ivy for a cascade over the edge of your pot. Even Vinca Illumination adds a nice variegation and also produces a violet flower.
Pansies & Violas
Pansies and Violas are perfect to go into any fall or winter seasonal planter. These Winter hardy plants are great to fill in an area and add a splash of color. Pansies grow taller than Violas so in a pot we typically recommend them to achieve different heights. Violas are also considered to be more winter hardy than Pansies because Violas tend to grow tightly together where Pansies tend to get leggy and grow outwards. The long blooming season and Winter hardiness make them great plants to help in transitioning containers into the Fall and Winter seasons.
Your pot size and preferences would depend on which plants to use for your fall and winter season needs as well as how many you want to plant and how you want to space them out. As always we’re more than happy to show you different options for your seasonal planters. Feel free to stop by Willow Ridge Garden Center in Oak Ridge, Tennessee or call us at 865-481-3825.