Fallscaping: Extending Your Garden Season into Autumn

by Nancy J. Ondra, Stéphanie Cohen, Rob Cardillo (Photographer)

Why should the joys of puttering in the garden be relegated to spring and summer when autumn has so much to offer? Enjoyable temperatures and more dependable rainfall in much of the country extend the growing season and allow the gardener to spend more time enjoying the garden and less time watering. Those final splendid months before winter's chill offer hospitable conditions for an impressive array of flowers, foliage, berries, and seedheads.

Nancy J. Ondra and Stephanie Cohen, two top garden writers and teachers, team up to show readers how to achieve three-season garden color. Join them on a detailed tour through dozens of plants that bring life and color to late-season gardens. Ondra and 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 autumn's golden weeks.

Ten complete garden plans put everything together for autumn-loving gardeners. Particularly stunning in the fall but designed to deliver multiseason appeal, they cover a range of growing conditions and color themes. The authors wrap up the season (and the book) with a garden care calendar featuring tips and techniques on how to plant, prune, and maintain gardens all season long so they remain glorious throughout the fall, as well as dozens of suggestions for how to prepare gardens for winter.

Genres: Gardening, Nonfiction, Crafts, Horticulture

738 pages, Kindle Edition

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.