Drabby fall gardens





Valerie Lowery@ZEON
10/12/98 02:19 PM

I have a question about fall gardening.  I know about all of the wonderful
perennials that thrive this time of year.  I know that you can grow grasses
and whatnot that will look fresh throughout the seasons.  But what do you
do about your spring perennials?  Every year at this time I get depressed
looking around my garden.  All of my late spring to summer perennials
look...well...rather shabby.  The leaves are old and ugly and nothing looks
fresh except for the fall perennials.  It seems that I have to either have
a summer garden or a fall one.

How can the rest of you keep the rest of your perennials looking fresh till
fall?  My fall perennials look funny sitting there next to stalks of other
plants.  If I cut them back, then I have these huge gaping holes.  If I
keep the plants there, then I have this mass of ugly detracting from my
mums and such.  I've tried to layer the plants for staggered bloom times,
but let's face it:  ugly foliage is ugly!  I can stagger bloom all day long
and nothing seems to keep much of anything looking green.  Everything's
faded or yellow/brown.  And my lilies!  Try hiding yellowing 3 foot stalks
of foliage!  You can't cut them down yet until they are completely hideous
or you will risk losing bloom the following year.  See the dilemma here?

What do the rest of you do?  I'm beginning to think that the pictures I see
in these gardening books are staged or they're all taken in England where
they don't deal with the same climate.  After all, they hardly ever show a
garden in the fall unless it was meant to be shown this time of year (i.e.,
all of the perennials are fall bloomers) or they'll show only a small
snippet of the border.  What's up with that?


Val in KY
zone 6a


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