With the dog days of summer nearly behind us, it’s time to look ahead to the splendor of fall. The days may be cool, but the colors become brighter and warmer with each passing day, culminating in a riot of dazzling reds, oranges, and yellows. If you don’t want your landscape to miss out on nature’s autumn color show, here are our tips for incorporating fall colors into your landscape design in Westhampton, Long Island, NY.
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Let’s start with the easiest way to add color to a landscape: plants known for their fall brilliance. The following ground covers, annuals and perennials, shrubs, grasses, and trees will make your landscape come alive when the temperatures dip.
Ground Covers
Perennial ground covers such as Creeping Thyme, Leadplant, Creeping Phlox, Bugleweed and Pachysandra can liven up your landscape with their delicate blooms and fall foliage and provide a welcome contrast to mulched planting areas. Creeping ground covers can be planted between stepping stones, or allowed to drape over retaining walls.
Annuals and Perennials
We tend to think of flowers as beautiful only when they’re in bloom; and while there are many fall bloomers to choose from, you can also look for annuals and perennials with attractive fall foliage.
Anise Hyssop, Strawflowers, Marigolds, Mums, Shrub Roses, Black-Eyed Susans, Asters, Coral Bells, Helenium, False Sunflower, Snapdragons, Dianthus, Sweet Alyssum, Chrysanthemum, Lobelia, Sedum, and Russian Sage offer gorgeous pops of color throughout your landscape. Plant annuals and perennials alone (for a delightful surprise of color), in color groups, or in a joyful medley of colors for a dynamic look that will make you forget the lazy days of summer are behind you!
Once annuals are spent, most need to be pulled up because their foliage dies soon after; so make sure you have plenty of fall-flowering perennials, ornamental grasses, and ground covers to keep your landscape vibrantly beautiful as the landscape slowly transitions into winter dormancy.
Shrubs
Oakleaf Hydrangea, American Witch Hazel, Viburnum, Chokecherry, Bayberry, Beautyberry, Blueberry, Red Twig Dogwood, Rose, Smoke Bush (Sea Myrtle), Sumac, and Winterberry will grace your landscape with gorgeous foliage that ranges from golden to vibrant reds, oranges, and purples. Some are late bloomers so you can enjoy their flowers as summer transitions to fall. And, some shrubs (like the Red Twig Dogwood) also have colored branches that will continue to add interest when the snow flies.
Evergreen shrubs offer a stunning contrast to colorful shrubs, and of course they’ll maintain their color throughout the entire year. Boxwoods, Holly, Barberry, Arborvitae, Mountain Laurel, and Junipers are great options with a surprisingly broad tonal range.
Balance their density with more “flowy” perennials and ornamental grasses for a softer and more natural look.
Ornamental Grasses
Ornamental grasses aren’t showy like flowers or fall foliage. They offer more subtle colors throughout the growing season, but their wonderful billowy seedheads ensure that your landscape is always dynamic and interesting. Favorites in the New York State growing zones include Sweet Flag, Foxtail Grass, Big Bluestem, Feather Reed, Blue Oat Grass, Bottlebrush Grass, Silver Feather Maiden Grass, Purple Fountain Grass, Switch Grass, and Indian Grass.
Plant ornamental grasses to balance the heft of denser plants like evergreens, and to soften the look of hardscape areas.
Trees
For the most spectacular fall foliage show, plant a mix of foliage colors. Work with your landscape designer or nursery to choose a variety of trees best suited to your landscape. Popular trees in New York State include maples (including the New York State Tree, the Sugar Maple) come in many varieties with different heights and spreads. Other spectacular fall trees include Franklin Tree, Washington Hawthorn, Apple Serviceberry, Red Oak, Dogwood, Quaking Aspen, Sassafras, Butternut Hickory, and Japanese Maple.
A 5-7 foot tree is mature enough to delight you with beautiful fall color. And, the color will only keep getting better as the tree grows! Keep the tree’s mature size in mind when purchasing saplings or young trees, so you’re sure to give them ample room to grow and to show off their fall beauty.
Some ornamental trees, such as Chinese Red Birch, Coral Bark Maple, Sargent’s Cherry or Paperbark Maple, will continue to add color to your landscape even after leaves have fallen. Their gorgeous reddish bark is a feast for the eyes when November skies are gloomy and grey!
Don’t forget the humble conifer. The vibrant green needles of pines, spruces, and cypress serve as a gorgeous backdrop to the splendor of deciduous trees in fall, and they liven up your landscape after all the fall color has faded and fallen leaves have been raked and bagged.
Tie the look together by creating a layered landscape. Shorter ground-hugging plants in front (next to the lawn), mid-sized perennials and shrubs in the middle, and taller and denser shrubs and trees in the background. Sprinkle in a few ornamental boulders, a birdbath, and a stepping stone walkway to add dimension and color. Bluestone stepping stones can be a wonderful contrast to a cobalt-blue birdbath and a granite boulder.
The softscape isn’t the only way to enjoy a vibrantly colorful landscape this fall. If nature is the primary artist in designing a wildly colorful softscape, you can take creative charge with hardscapes. Use hardscape elements such as boulders, walkways, and retaining walls to add even more dimension - and color - to your landscape.
Decorative Rocks and Boulders
Oversized landscape rocks in varying sizes can be the perfect addition to your landscape. They bring visual weight that can be balanced with tall conifers, clusters of evergreen shrubs, a masonry fireplace, or even the home. The rocks themselves may offer subtle color variations, but more than anything they act as a blank canvas for plants. The spaces between boulders offer endless opportunities for planting ornamental grasses, ground covers, or a mix of annuals and perennials.
Rocks placed in shaded areas tend to grow a patina of lichen over the years; sometimes, this lichen will have gorgeous orange or reddish hues, for an unexpected pop of color in the landscape.
Retaining Walls and Seat Walls
Whether you use natural stone or manufactured stone, retaining walls and seat walls are a great way to add subtle color to your landscape. Any wall with a flat cap stone can become an ideal spot to place colorful flower pots filled with fall-flowering annuals or perennials such as Chrysanthemums, Pansies, Croton, Flowering Kale, or ornamental grasses. You could even place a few pumpkins along the wall for a festive fall look.
Dry-stack fieldstone walls have been used for centuries in the eastern United States, and they remain popular features in naturalistic landscapes. Over time, the stones will develop a patina of mosses and lichens, especially if the wall is placed in a shady area, which offers a beautiful contrast to the extravagant colors of fall.
Walkways
A walkway invites you to get up close and personal with the landscape. But that doesn’t mean you can’t introduce a little color here, too! Many concrete pavers come in vivid colors; but you can also transform your walkway as something more neutral to balance nature’s extravaganza. Choose a color that harmonizes with the home because the colors of the landscape will always be changing from day to day.
Concrete pavers that resemble bluestone or old-world cobblestones give you a one-of-a-kind walkway that echo the materials and shapes of nature, but in a more structured way that perfectly blends the natural and the manmade.
Patio
Surround your patio with color: deciduous trees, soft ornamental grasses, colorful shrubs and flowers. The patio doesn’t have to transition directly to the lawn. You can bring fall color closer by installing a plant bed between the patio and the lawn; and some of the plants in this zone could be taller trees that offer shade in the summer as well as gorgeous color in fall.
In addition to an in-ground planting zone, masonry raised bed planters at the patio’s perimeter let you create a “green zone” immediately adjacent to the patio - as well as offering visitors a place to sit on their broad cap stones.
The primary colors of your patio pavers are best left neutral so that the patio serves as a perfect complement to each season’s colors. With that said, you can use accents in warm fall colors to remind you of this magical time of year, whether it’s fall or not.
Brick can be considered “the little black dress” of patio materials and it’s beautiful whether you use it as the main paver field or as an accent, border, or decorative inlay. There are many colors and shades available in both clay bricks and concrete brick pavers - not just “brick red” - so if you have a particularly gorgeous tree whose fall colors you would like to pick up year-round, you could match or complement its foliage with a decorative brick accent.
Pergola
A pergola is a classic shade structure that’s usually associated with summer relaxation and entertaining. However, you could add some orange-toned outdoor curtains in the fall - not only to add color, but to block chilly winds.
Warm Lighting
A fall landscape is most spectacular during daytime, but don’t miss the chance to add warmth to your outdoor living spaces with landscape lighting that echoes fall colors. Most landscape light fixtures offer a choice of color temperatures. Choose warm yellow tones to complement the season’s colors and make the light less harsh. If you’re not sure what color temperature would work best, think about the flames that come from a wood fire: the color of a campfire is a color temperature pleasing to the eye, and it brings a warm ambience to your patio whether you have a fire feature or not.
Of course, a fire feature such as a fireplace, fire pit, or fire table will encourage you to be outdoors more even as the temperatures dip. Aside from a cooking/dining area, nothing encourages people to gather more than a fire!
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