Fallscaping: Extending Your Garden Season into Autumn by Nancy J. Ondra

by Nancy J. Ondra

Bring late-season appeal to your yard with vines, shrubs, trees, and flowers that retain their good looks through the sweet, golden days of autumn. Nancy J. Ondra and Stephanie Cohen identify all the key fall-specific players and explain how to combine them with multiseason workhorse plants to create gardens that move gracefully from spring through the riotous days of summer and into the last hurrah of autumn. Beautiful blooms, rich foliage, and dramatic seed heads all have their roles to play in long-lasting fallscapes. Ondra and Cohen discuss dozens of their favorites in each cateogry and offer extensive advice on how best to integrate them into landscapes that give as much pleasure in October as they do in July. Ten complete garden plans pull everything together. Particularly stunning in the fall but designed to deliver three-season appeal, they cover a range of growing conditions and color themes, and will satisfy even the most intense post-summer gardening urges.

Genres: Gardening, Nonfiction, Crafts, Horticulture

Paperback

First published September 12, 2007

About the author

I garden at Hayefield in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Now in its 23rd year, Hayefield includes about three acres of managed meadow and one acre of intensively planted garden and open shrubbery areas.

A freelance garden writer, editor, and photographer, I also sell home-grown seeds and blog about my favorite plants, combinations, and other gardening topics at http://hayefield.com/

Reviews

[Kathy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful pictures with excellent descriptions. I especially like how a picture is shown and then there is smaller box with just the areas each flower takes up in the picture, named. So much easier to see which flower is which.

[Pam · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent book on how to enhance your fall perennial garden! The photos are superb but the text provides many important insights as well. Ondra discusses how to correct the ravages of the summer heat and fill large empty spaces. How to protect the invisible spring bulbs while you plant during the fall months. How to plant autumn blooming bulbs among other perennials which will shelter them when dormant but provide a visible location for their autumn bloom. I highly recommend this book!

[False · Rating 2 out of 5]

I've been reading her gardening books, and I would say my verdict is "so so." She doesn't write with poetics and enthusiasm about the plants, and the way they are organized, including this one, baffle me in terms of usefulness. A far better book on the subject is "The Garden in Autumn," and that one I own. Your eyes will open to the beauty of the changing, waning environment of fall.

[Nancy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Informative

[Nancy · Rating 4 out of 5]

The advice is pretty standard, but the photos are flat-out gorgeous.