In The Fall, Red Rules in My Garden
Submitted by May Dreams Gardens Blog
Do you plan for fall color in your garden?
I have so much red in my garden right now, that I’m going to claim I planned it that way! Who would know otherwise?
Forget that I don’t really like red flowers. In the fall, red rules in my garden.
This first red shrub is Viburnum carlesii, the Korean Spice Viburnum. I actually got it because of the fragrant spring blooms, without thought to the fall color, so this is a happy red surprise!
In the backyard, the Red Maple, Acer rubrum, is a perfect red right now.
I’ve already noted that I don’t know if this is ‘October Glory’ or ‘Autumn Blaze’. But if I were a betting gardener, I would go with ‘Autumn Blaze’ because this is far redder than the Red Maple in front. (This would also mean that I did NOT do something ridiculous like plant them in alphabetical order from front to back to remember which was which.)
Here’s a close up of the foliage of that maple.
That’s red.
Another red shrub in my garden is the native Sweetspire, Itea virgiania ‘Henry’s Garnet’.
Like the Korean Spice Viburnum, the Sweetspire also has good spring blooms.
Over at the neighbor’s house, this flowering dogwood, Cornus sp., complements the red in my garden.
I always think of the writer Henry Mitchell when I stop to admire this small tree in the fall. There’s no time in the fall, as he noted, to be ‘lolling’ around admiring the dogwoods turning red. There is way too much work to be done in the garden for that!
Elsewhere in the neighborhood, there are some Burning Bush shrubs, Euonymus alatus ‘Compacta’.
Thanks to search engines, the post I wrote called ‘The Truth About Burning Bush’ is the most read post on my blog.
Even my wheelbarrow, standing ready to assist in fall clean up, is red.
Me and my wheelbarrow go back a few years, 20 years to be precise. It sure has hauled a lot without complaining. Other than needing a new tire a few years back, it hasn’t asked for much in return other than a dry place to rest in the winter and an occasionally hosing out.
What color dominates in your garden today?
