Plants to Try in Your Fall Landscape

Make your fall landscape more interesting. Enhance your old summer palette with fall colors. Highlight changing textures with new focal points. Add new varieties bare spots in beds and borders or create new containers. Include flowers that nourish bees and butterflies, seeds that feed the birds and foliage that serves as people food.

Does sound like a lot to do? It’s not. Here are 10 annuals to try in your landscape.

You’ll have to start trolling nurseries and garden centers for these plants now in order to find them. You can still grow a few from seed.

Limelight Spray and Purple Majesty millet are varieties of pennisetum that can work in a border, as a focal point or in a container. They attract bees, butterflies and birds, too.

Limelight Spray millet grows 4 – 5 ft. tall and has a longer head than other pennisetum varieties. The entire plant is vibrant lime green. Self-supporting, it remains upright even in severe weather. It is an excellent cut or dried flower. Harvest some of the seed heads for indoor use when they are fully open but not yet fluffy, but leave most of the seed heads on the plants for the birds.

Purple Majesty millet is a commonly grown pennisetum variety that produces 4 – 5 ft. burgundy foliage and a profusion of blooms. It needs full sun, regular water and excellent drainage.

Amaranthus is an old-fashioned flower, at home in a cottage garden, a border or a planter. Don’t be put off by the fact that the ornamental Amaranth varieties are in the same family has ugly and hated pigweed. The ornamental species were bred for their flowers and have long been well behaved garden participants.

Love-Lies- Bleeding, is the most familiar amaranthus variety available for the garden. Its wine-red tassels hang like chenille ropes (or dreadlocks—your call) from the leafy 3 – 5 ft. plant Bees are attracted to the flowers.

Green Tails amaranthus is similar to Love-Lies-Bleeding, only it has lime green tassels. There are also dwarf and upright flowering varieties. They are available as seeds. Love-Lies-Bleeding is the most likely potted find at a nursery.

Globe amaranth, gomphrena haageana, is a 12 – 24 in. multi stemmed cousin with clover-like flowers that attract butterflies. It is in the same family as Love-Lies-Bleeding, but looks quite different and is not showy. Globe amaranth flowers are easily dried and retain their color well.

Amaranthus blooms from mid-summer well into fall. Plants may need to be staked. Love-Lies-Bleeding and Green Tails tassels are long lasting when cut and dramatic in a vase. Leave some tassels on your plants to dry and drop to the ground where some will self-seed.

Coleus has mutated or it has been bred to produce so many different leaf colors and patterns it is useless to try to keep track of them. Check garden centers and nurseries to see what is available that suits your fall palette. The leaves are great for fall color. Coleus is easy to propagate, so retain favorite color combinations by taking cuttings before frost.

For a dark and moody Halloween planter keep your eyes open for black sweet potato vine (spiller) and black mondo grass (filler). Complete the look with Purple Majesty millet (thriller).

Mustard greens and kale can be beautiful and dramatic—pretty enough for a front yard planter. Plant seeds in late summer or buy transplants for late fall harvest.

Check out Savanna hybrid mustard which grows huge glossy dark green leaves and Japanese Giant Red mustard with maroon and chartreuse leaves. Mustard greens should mature under cool temperatures for best flavor.

Redbor Kale’s leaves are curly and deep purple making it highly ornamental, yet it is mild and crisp in a salad and supremely edible. Light frost brings out its sweetness. Redbor adds color to salads, gardens or planters.

Why not plant some annuals that are new to your garden well before you haul in the pumpkins, ornamental squash, cornstalks and hay bales to play up the harvest aspect of fall. You might want to repeat them next year or try something else new.

This story was originally published July 29, 2016 at 12:58 PM with the headline "Plants to Try in Your Fall Landscape."