Margaret Murphy
Horticulture Educator for Chippewa, Dunn, & Eau Claire Counties
UW-Madison Extension
Add a Touch of Autumn Splendor to Garden Containers
Soon nature will be surrounding us with beautiful, warm tones. Celebrate the season’s change by creating fall containers that capture autumn’s colors. Don’t be afraid to mix and match. Have fun experimenting with different textures and forms. I love incorporating maple leaves and birch or dogwood twigs together with flowers and gourds to create a striking display of fall items.
Create a new design or freshen an existing container by replacing tired or finished summer-annuals with brightly colored fall blooms and plants with showy foliage. Some of my containers have annual plants that still look great. For these, I will just add some fall color to rejuvenate the pot. Fall color schemes generally include assorted hues of orange, yellow, and red. These are welcoming, bold tones that grab one’s attention even from a distance. With today’s flower choices, you can now also find blooms in shades of bronze, copper and terra cotta.
Cool-season flowers that do well in fall planters include pot marigold, cape daisy, pansies, sweet pea and sweet alyssum. Of course, we can’t forget mums, which come in an amazing array of autumn colors. Plants such as Swiss chard, dusty Miller, ornamental kale and cabbage are used for their decorative foliage. They offer leaves in different shades of green, deep reds and dark purples.
When designing a container, consider the height and spread of the plants you choose. Spikes and other eye-catching, upright plants add vertical interest and are usually the focal point of the container. Ornamental grasses and tall flowering plants work well for adding height to an arrangement. Mounding or spreading plants add fullness and should help show off the vertical centerpiece. Trailing plant varieties that cascade over the edge will soften and anchor the pot to its surroundings. Creating a design using all three types (often called thrillers, fillers and spillers) is the traditional container blueprint; however, containers with just one type of plant or all one-color works just as well.
For containers that will be viewed from all sides, place the thriller plant or plants in the middle and build out from there. With pots seen just from the front, place the focal plant in the back and build the design forward.
Grouping your containers together by mixing different heights, colors and forms can have a huge, eye-catching impact. It can help make a large, open area such as on a porch, patio or front entrance seem less stark. Placing together several containers with a repeating design pattern can bring a more harmonious feel while containers with contrasting designs and colors create more of a pop. You can also arrange pots vertically by stacking them into a tower form. Place a smaller pot into the soil of a larger, broader pot. To help secure the pots, place a stick or garden stake through the top pot’s drainage hole and push it down into the larger pot’s soil. I did this using three different sized pots. I placed my thrillers in the top pot, fillers in the bottom two pots and a few spillers in all three. The effect was amazing giving the corner of the patio an attention-grabbing display.
In the spring, plants are vigorously growing and will quickly fill in the container. During the fall, however, plant growth is slowing down so use mature plants already in bloom or with large, interesting foliage. Place plants more closely in a fall container than you would in a spring pot for an instant full effect. For a loud burst of color, put several of the same plant together in a cluster.
Surround your design with pumpkins, decorative gourds or other seasonal odds and ends that you may come across. As we get closer to Halloween, you can easily find straw bales, cornstalks and decorative scarecrows to help put together an autumn harvest theme. For something different, scoop out a pumpkin, put in a drainage hole, then fill with potting soil and plant pansies or mums to create a pumpkin planter.
Whatever you do, have fun and enjoy your fall decorating!
