How To Get Fall Color In Your Lawn and Landscape

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Rusty Thompson on October 20th, 2014

We are officially in the fall season. The temperatures have come down to a more pleasant level and that means that your lawn no longer needs as heavy a watering schedule as it did through the summer (don’t forget to adjust your automatic sprinklers to save money on your GRU bill!)

Typically at this time of year, most flower beds and borders look worn out. But though it may feel counterintuitive, fall is the best time to plant in Gainesville, Florida for a variety of reasons reasons:

  • Your soil is still warm in fall in North Florida
  • The air is cooling down which means plants will lose less moisture through their leaves. 
  • Our winters are mild and allow plants more time to adjust before the triple-digit heat.
  • And most importantly, these conditions lead to stronger root growth than any other season of the year. 

I went into much greater detail on this subject in our Quick Tip a few weeks back. You can read that entry here  if you like.

At this time of the year nurseries are well stocked with hardy, late-blooming plants to refresh your bed. And the best part about planting at this time of year is that the plants will have ideal conditions to grow strong roots over winter, so they’ll be ready to sprint into bloom next spring, too.

If you want to introduce some fall color into your Gainesville Landscape, some of our favorites are…

  • Pansies:   In North Texas Dallas if you want colorful blooms over the winter your go-to flower are pansies.  I’ve never understood why the name pansy got associated with wimpy when they’re the toughest flower I’ve seen.  They can weather single digit temperatures and wintry precipitation.  Then, a few sunny days later, will bounce back and start blooming again.  They will bloom better with a high phosphorous fertilizer (5-30-5 ratio.)  Like most flowers they prefer a loose well drained soil so they don’t stay wet after watering.  An easy way to accomplish that is to add potting soil to the bed.
  • Violas:  They have pansy-like blooms except the blooms are smaller.  You can plant these in similar conditions to pansies though, and they do well.
  • Kale and/or Cabbage:  Oddly enough, if you have deer problems, you are safe planting flowering kale and/or cabbage.  Deer would rather eat your flowers than your vegetables!  These aren’t as colorful as pansies but they’re easy to grow.  You will want to eat or replace them in spring though, as they will be tall and leggy come April.
  • Mums:  These are wonderful fall plants.  Like azaleas, they only bloom a few weeks out of the year, but when they bloom they look great, especially with pumpkins and a couple bales of hay.
  • Diascia: These will no longer be blooming after the first frost, but they are still looking great and do so most of the year. 

You can also introduce a burst of color by purchasing some pumpkins and gourds at a local pumpkin patch. There are a number of these patches, but the one we recommend is in front of Littlewood Elementary on the corner of 8th and 34th. (Littlewood Elementary is one of our clients)

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Landscaping