The Pinks and Purples of Autumn

26.09.2024 - 06:01 / finegardening.com / GPOD Contributor

Hi GPODers!

Today we’re getting an update from Jane Watkins in upstate New York. Jane has shared her garden a few years in the past (check out those submissions: A Colorful Perennial Garden, Finding Plants That Work, and Spring After a Hard Winter), but today we’re getting a glimpse of her garden as it transitions to autumn and the many pinks and purples of the season are on display.

My name is Jane and I garden in central upstate New York, near the Finger Lakes in zone 5b. I’ve been gardening in this location nearly 40 years. I am a Master Gardener through Cornell Cooperative Extension and enjoy working with my fellow gardeners as well as in my own gardens. My challenges are heavy clay soil full of rocks (although they make great stone garden walls) and a voracious deer population. I protect some plants, like hardy hibiscus, with deer netting and plan to move them next spring to a more protected semi-fenced location in my back yard. I also drape deer netting over my clematis. I try not to use too much of this because I don’t want birds or chipmunks getting tangled in the netting. For other deer snacks, like phlox and Asiatic lilies, I “hide” them behind minty monarda or short grasses. I store the dahlia tubers in coolers filled with wood shavings. The Grandpa Otts morning glories were started decades ago and self-sow everywhere. I start the zinnias indoors under grow lights. Everything else is a hardy perennial.

In late summer, Jane’s garden is an explosion of color with bursts of coneflowers and black-eyed Susans (Rudbeckia hirta, Zones 3–9). While pink often isn’t the first color we think of when scenes of autumn come to mind, it is a color that pairs so well with the other colors of the season like yellow, orange