PUSH THE ZONE
By tucking canna, pineapple lily, and dahlias amid drifts of kniphofia and grasses, the owners of this temperate-zone garden get to spend late summer in the tropics.
The color of Dahlia ‘Uptown Girl’ intensifies in the golden light of fall.
If you are willing and able to make winter accommodations for plants that wouldn’t otherwise survive in your climate, you’ll open the garden door to a much wider world of possibilities. Tropical plants, frost-tender succulents, and perennials from temperate climates offer fresh and unusual elements otherwise lacking in an exclusively hardy palette of perennials and shrubs. Welcome exotic contrasts, scents evocative of faraway vacations, and a full-spectrum of flowers that promise a color boost just when spring-loaded gardens need it most. And then enjoy how they defy all expectations and extend the initial extravagant display through the heat of summer and well into fall.
African blue basil (Ocimum ‘African Blue’) catches the long light in Blithewold’s Pollinator Garden.
Any plant that offers well-timed weeks or months of interest is inherently valuable, but when given winter protection—on sunny living room windowsills, in bright enclosed porches and cold frames, or in dark, cool basements—tender plants become true keepers that are as worthy of their purchase price as any hardy perennial or shrub wintering outside. It is perfectly reasonable to expect them to survive and enrich the garden for years. And just as with self-sowers and spreaders, by taking advantage of their vigor via propagation, you can grow more than you paid for to keep the garden stocked with exotics and share your favorites with friends. There’s no (good) reason to ever let the garden—or your interest in it—fade.
Make a wreath of succulent cuttings, like this one at Avant Gardens, to bring inside for the winter.
I wasn’t always so sure about that. When I left the long, mild seasons of the West Coast to return home to the wintery East, I said goodbye to the plants I had relied on as hardy perennials. I assumed my days of gardening with fuchsias, salvias, phormium, Spanish lavender, and rosemary were over. Then I began working with horticulturists at Blithewold who are expert in the art of using tender plants to keep the gardens in peak bloom from spring’s start to fall’s killing frost, even on a tight nonprofit budget. In late summer and fall, visitors—passionate gardeners and regulars among them—seem genuinely surprised to “still” see so much color and pollinator activity in the gardens that I now help design. Their surprise is a shame though. As glad as I am to accept any portion of the compliments, I am convinced that every gardener could and should take a long, spectacular season for granted.
You can count on blue anise sage (Salvia guaranitica) and pink porterweed (Stachytarpheta mutabilis) that start out in spring as rooted cuttings in 4-inch pots, to grow 3 feet tall by midsummer. Dahlias that go into the ground in early summer as tubers just breaking dormancy, bloom by late summer and won’t quit until the hardest frost. Grow African blue basil (Ocimum ‘African Blue’) for its purple-tinged leaves and blooms that glow in the slanted light of fall, rather than for its culinary qualities. Let it fill in around echinacea seedheads and give the bees a reason to keep working. Take cuttings in the fall for next year’s garden and take cuttings from your cuttings in spring to grow even more.
Plant Fuchsia ‘Gartenmeister Bonstedt’ to feed the hummingbirds before they migrate and let a collection of tender ferns and begonias decorate a shady corner of the deck. Grow rosemary (Rosmarinus officinalis), lemon verbena (Aloysia triphylla), and Spanish lavender (Lavandula stoechas) in your herb garden. Keep them in their pots for easy fall relocation to the porch or basement, or give them the season to become lush in the ground—they won’t need to be watered as frequently—before potting them back up to bring inside.
Angel’s trumpets (Brugmansia) make outstanding container plants but they’ll be even more outrageous planted in the ground. Find a spot in dappled shade or morning sun with rich soil that stays moist and let it dangle its enormous citrus-scented trumpets over hostas, or plant it to contrast with the tinier trumpets of flowering tobacco (Nicotiana). If your garden, or a part of your garden, doesn’t ever fall below freezing, you may be able to overwinter your angel’s trumpet with a heavy cover of mulch. Otherwise, dig it up or take cuttings to bring inside for the winter.
Plant a necklace of tender succulents—try echeveria, kalanchoe, and aeonium—at the sunny edges of your walkways and patio and then bring them inside to a sunny south window where they might be persuaded to bloom over the winter. Place scented geraniums (Pelargonium) in your rose garden as aphid-deterring companions or next to your favorite bench where you can stroke their aromatic leaves to release their scent. Cut them back to bring inside for the winter, root those cuttings, and dry some leaves for sachets.
From midsummer through fall, every garden still has tremendous energy and potential. Give in to the temptation of frost-tender and exotic species, and plan for a succession of color, curious textures, delicious scents, and pollinator entertainment that will sustain you through the lean months and even well into winter.
A potted Alocasia ‘Calidora’ (colocasia’s cousin) shines in a shady foundation border.
