Published by: Almanac
Make the flowers of summer last a little longer! Discover plants that bring colorful flowers to your gardens throughout September and October. Here are 50 fall flowers, shrubs, trees, and other plants that welcome the season with a blaze of color.
Foxgloves that were cut back after flowering this summer are putting out second spikes of bloom. The rugosa rose is still producing blossoms as well.
But we can add an extra season of interest with fall-blooming flowers, colorful shrubs, and other plants that are at their best in the fall.
Make the flowers of summer last a little longer! Discover plants that bring colorful flowers to your gardens throughout September and October. Here are 50 fall flowers, shrubs, trees, and other plants that welcome the season with a blaze of color.
Foxgloves that were cut back after flowering this summer are putting out second spikes of bloom. The rugosa rose is still producing blossoms as well.
But we can add an extra season of interest with fall-blooming flowers, colorful shrubs, and other plants that are at their best in the fall.
Annual Flowers
Lots of annuals that can take some cooler temps will still be pumping out the blossoms into fall.
These include nasturtiums, zinnias, calendula, marigolds, and rudbeckias.
Perennial Flowers
Fall-blooming perennials often showcase the jewel tones of the season with beautiful reds, golds, and russets.
Joe-Pye weed (Eutrochium purpureum) is a reliable native perennial that blooms from late summer through the first few frosts. The large, purple, clustered flowers grow on plants that can be over 6 feet tall in the right place. Where is that place? Since this plant likes moist soil, many wild ones grow along stream beds and riverbanks in full sun. Pollinators love Joe-Pye weed, so add a couple to the back of your sunny border.
Hylotelephium (formerly Sedum) ‘Autumn Joy’ is truly a joy this time of year, when deep-pink blooms emerge from its fleshy foliage. ‘Matrona’ is another variety that produces tall stems.
Yellow heliopsis are in full flower in fall.
Surprise lily, Lycoris squamigera, is known by several names, each more revealing than the next. Its genus honors the mistress of the ancient Roman Mark Antony, while it is more commonly called resurrection, surprise, and magic lily because its straplike foliage appears in spring and dies back in late summer. And just when you think that it has failed you, its flower stem rises between 18 and 24 inches to burst forth with 4 to 7 trumpetlike, rose-pink blooms that have exceptional fragrance.
Asters are the queen and king of the fall garden, deserving of several entries. They are easily grown from seed, but this time of year, the garden centers offer a wide range of colors and heights to choose from.
New England asters; despite their name, they grow throughout the US and Canada. They can get quite tall if not chopped back by half in early summer. That quick pruning encourages them to branch, giving us even more flowers on more manageable-sized plants. They have also had a name change, being moved from the crowded aster family to their own separate genus Symphyotrichum.
Snowbank’ false aster, Boltonia asteroides, only sounds chilling; in fact, its billowing profusion of daisylike flowers with their gold centers spreads sunshine. Evocative of aster (hence its nickname: false aster), coreopsis, and cornflower, this North American native begins to flower in August and continues well into September (the first frost will bring its show to an end). A compact plant, it grows just 3 to 4 feet tall and needs no staking.
Other favorite perennials for fall color include:
- Canadian burnet (Sanguisorba canadensis)
- Blue monkshood (Aconitum carmichaelii)
- Hardy chrysanthemum ‘Venus’, ‘Sheffield’
- Boltonia asteroides ‘Snowbank’
- Black cohosh (aka bugbane) (Cimicifuga racemosa) ‘Hillside Black Beauty’
- Lycoris (Lycoris squamigera)
- Bugbane ‘Hillside Black Beauty’