Fall is a great time to refresh your tired summer garden. Making a few changes can alter your landscape and extend your color beauty. For starters, remove tired annuals and plant hardy winter pansies. They will last through the winter, even bouncing back after winter freezes and snows. Take down your fading summer hanging basket and replace it with a fall mum basket. Cut back spent perennials and add something different such as a new variety of coreopsis, sedum or daylily. Their blooms will last late into the fall. Planting a hardy Belgian mum ensures that you will have fall color year after year. Consider incorporating a winter blooming witchhazel or evergreen camellia shrub into your design. Or simply create a mix of pansies, mum, ornamental grass, pepper and a colorful perennial in a bright new pot and place it on your front step.
You can find many of these plants and more ideas at your local garden spot. If you are in the Leesburg , Virginia area, stop by the fall plant sale at Monroe Technology Center September 14, 15 and 16th. Whatever you can do, have some fun with your fall refresh
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thedailylily.com 
Do you have the “Ornamental Cabbage Plants?”
Yes we do. The 8′ size are $5 and the 4″ are $3.
I would like a few, not sure how many? Do you put one in a pot with pansies? Or more?
You can group more than one in a pot, mixing some small with large and using diffferent colors w/ pansies.
Sounds beautiful. Great to see the Fall colors. Looks like the plants are extraordinarily beautiful! Blessings on your sale!
I’ve got my 5 pots stashed in the trunk ready to go get my pansies right after school, tomorrow. Pansies are my favorites. Their beauty lasts thru all the seasons, mostly, until the very hot weather sets in. They grace my front entrance and bring joy and delight every single day, even peeking thru the snow and ice on my front stoop. Pansies are not only beautiful, they have character, poise, personality, and the ever- famous PERSEVERANCE. They are hearty and principled. I love the pansies. God did an excellent job on those lovely little creations.
Debi, the horticulturist writes, “Fall is a great time to refresh your tired summer garden…” Maybe some have gardens like mine. In the Eastern Part of NC and Northern Va. some of our gardens didn’t have the opportunity to get tired, including mine. A major hurricane by the name of Irene took them down without even an apology. Irene came in as mad as a ‘mad hatter’ and scattered the floras as if she controlled the balance in the sea and the land. And, that she did for many hours. She left behind scattered soaked pots of nothing but dirt and flood without the life of ‘ere a bloom.’
O, yes, Ms. pots of pansies set among a talking mum while a daylily patiently awaits the morning Autumn sun. They look up and see a cup of fresh brew in the hands of a novice gardener enjoying the thoughts of life that has once again shown Autumn is a fresh as a newborn Hare that has just learned to nibble from a bright orange mum.
O, the smile that lights my face when I glance and see the star shaped leaves of the newly planted ‘sedum’ just a smiling at me!
Thanks Autumn Gardens @Monroe Technology Center for being there just for US!
Wow! What beautiful glorious flowers in the pictures. I hope you sell lots of them!
And, WHOA, do we have a WRITER! Love it Sara!
Our hearts and prayers go out to the gardeners, gardens and peoples of Eastern NC that you have so expressively written about above Sara. May their gardens and lives soon bloom again.
Sara, I love your imagery in your writing. I feel like I am taking a walk with you along a lovely road.
I was lucky enough to help out a little at the plant sale. Many people came straight from work anxious to buy. Their tired faces lit up as mine did when they saw the beautiful pansies, cabbages, and mums. Others focused in on the trees.
Purchasing my choice of Autumn picks, I took out the summer Irene hit plants Sara mentioned and put in pansies first. Then in a large pot I placed an orange colored Mum right smack in the middle with orange colored pansies around the Mum, the pansies gently cascaded over the edge. Then I placed a cabbage plant right in front between the Mum and the pansies. I also planted one pot just with pansies. They are quite beautiful. Monroe Tech sure does a nice job working together to put on the sale. Those who printed the signs did a wonderful job designing and displaying the new signs and all the students, teachers, and volunteers assisted in keeping the plants healthy and growing for all who want the Autumn flowers to grace their yards.
I sped gleefully away with a trunk full of glory. I had hauled my “tired, old, much depleted pots of soil that sat in the trunk of my car through a hectic morning and afternoon commute to & from Fairfax. But when I arrived at Monroe Tech after school, Debi had her ready and able horticultural students quickly retrieve the pots from my car.
Oh the glory of PANSY-NESS in profusion!! Debi helped pick and I could hardly stop picking until all four pots were spilling over with black/purple, orange-faced, sunny yellow, crimson and ‘papery-white PANSIES. She defly and swiftly filled each pot to overflowing and again, her well-instructed students covered the trunk floor with liners and placed the treasured pots there, carefully . Not a spot of soil or water escaped into the car trunk. Good job, Debi. Good job, students.
Now my front door is again graced with glory. Pansies speak volumes to me.
They speak of fortitude, strength in the face of adversity,( like snow and ice) and it seems nothing deters them…(well except 95 degree weather) and yet they keep their bright-eyed beauty and cheerfulness. Thank You God for Your creative beauty. Paul was right in the Book of Romans. The greatness of God, His versatility and creativeness are all around us. Just look at the sun, moon and stars. Just look at the PANSY.
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Sara, your prose is lovely AND inspiring; as lovely as a pansy.
Thank you MG…Guess that is a sale pitch for me to get busy and buy me some pansies. The word flow on pansies has taken my mind off ice cream bars! Now that’s a mouth full for me.
And, it’s cold this early morn! Guess that’s what Ms Pansy ordered. Hey, those little chattering heads sure do know how to turn the face of the sun.
Sara!! OMG I, too, have had my mind on ice cream bars and on the way home from school I earnestly speed past the drug store near my house where they sell them. It must be something in the air. But you are right. This pansy frenzy has taken my mind off that for a few hours. The self-control issue sure is prevalent in my life at this time. Maybe the gorgeousness of the “chattering heads” as you’ve dubbed them will alleviate the pains of withdrawal [from ice cream bars, that is] 😦
Hey MG, secret we have,hum. I heard we could find coconut ice cream bars. Have you seen or had them?
What? You had to go and tell me that! Now I won’t rest till I find them