chokeberry
Black chokeberry has excellent fall color.
Late summer and early fall gardens are wonderful. The asters and goldenrod are in bloom, the ornamental grasses start turning brown, and the goldfinches are perched on the coneflower seedheads. From my kitchen window I also see cardinal flower, great blue lobelia, turtlehead, iron weed, joe pye weed, silphium, blue sage, various rudbeckias, and so on. There is no shortage of fall flowers for the perennial border.
And let’s not forget shrubs for fall color. Shrubs are so useful in the garden. They offer height, privacy, structure, form, and also they provide a great backdrop for a perennial border or structure within the perennial garden. There are many that also dress up in festive autumnal colors, some with splashy berries. Let me introduce you to some of them.
Here is a great plant that does well through summer drought, heat and humidity. ‘Gro-Low’ fragrant sumac (Rhus aromatica ‘Gro-Low) is perfect for planting en masse to stabilize a sunny slope or where a taller groundcover is desired. It grows quickly to about two foot tall by six foot wide. Want it to be smaller? Just prune it back to three inches from the ground in the spring and by mid-summer it will have completely recovered. I like the rambling nature of this shrub and the fall color tends to be brilliant reddish-orange to scarlet.
Winterberry holly (Ilex verticillata) cultivars come in many shapes and sizes. For much of the year they’re just plain filler shrubs, but in the fall, wow. The berries have real impact in the garden. ‘Red Sprite’, also known as ‘Nana’ or ‘Compacta’, has lots of very winter persistent red fruits and its smaller size (four foot tall and wide) makes it easy to use. ‘Shaver’ is very useful in landscape design due to its upright, compact form. It is slow growing to six foot tall by three foot wide. ‘Winter Red’ and ‘Winter Gold’ are larger with profuse quantities of berries. Hollies are dioecious, meaning that the female requires a nearby male in order to berry. Just get the right male, stick him somewhere behind the scenes and keep him pruned to a small size. Sorry, guys.
Viburnums also are terrific shrubs. Spring blooms (some fragrant) are followed by berries and many have great fall leaf color. Consider viburnum nudum ‘Winterthur’, with its compact size of about six foot tall and wide and amazingly blue berries that pop against the intense maroon red fall leaves. V. nudum ‘Brandywine’ is known for its vivid pink and blue berries. ‘Eskimo’ viburnum is also rather compact; its leaves turn attractive shades of yellow, orange and red in fall. ‘Mohawk’ is larger with fragrant blooms and good fall color.
Aronia arbutifolia, red chokeberry, is an underutilized shrub with great characteristics. It is most readily available as the cultivar ‘Brilliantissima’, with showy spring flowers, large red berries and lovely fall color. It grows to seven foot tall and three foot wide, will take full sun to part shade and tolerates the clay soil so many of us have. I like A. melanocarpa, or black chokeberry, too, even though the black fruits are not as showy.
The landscape value of blueberries is often overlooked as well. Highbush blueberry (Vaccinium corymbosum) likes acidic soils, so give it some Hollytone or elemental sulphur in spring and fall. It will reward you with spring blooms, edible fruit (maybe just for the birds) and long-lasting fall color. Cross pollination tends to produce the best fruit crop, meaning it is best to plant a couple of cultivars if you wish to maximize fruit set.
We mustn’t forget the much beloved oakleaf hydrangea. Hydrangea quercifolia cultivars range from large (like ‘Snow Queen’ and ‘Alice’) to much smaller (‘Pee Wee’ and ‘Sike’s Dwarf’) They all have those large pyramidal panicles of white flowers, exfoliating bark and lobed, oak-like leaves. In the fall those leaves turn to shades of bronze, maroon and purple. This hydrangea flowers on old wood so, if you feel the need to prune, don’t wait until too late in the season or you will cut off next year’s blooms.
Itea is becoming a popular plant, too. It is very versatile – sun or shade, and tolerates a wide variety of soil conditions and is drought tolerant. Itea virginica ‘Henry’s Garnet’ grows to about four foot tall and wide. ‘Little Henry’ is about half this size. Spring flowers form cylindrical white racemes that cover the plant. Fall colors are variations on a reddish theme.
Fothergilla major and fothergilla gardenii (dwarf fothergilla) are also tough plants with excellent shade tolerance, though they also do well in full sun. It has a white spring bloom and excellent, rather cherry red, fall color.
Enough of this red – how about yellow? Clethra alnifolia, lindera benzoin (spicebush), and Hamamelis virginiana (common witchhazel) all turn a striking yellow in the fall.
Autumn is almost upon us. The end of summer, but definitely not the end of a beautiful landscape. Fall can compete with any season for beauty in the garden.