From clean-up to planting, autumn is always a busy time in the garden. A 'second spring' of color and growth gives way to the ideal weather to plant.
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Fabulous Fall Plants
Though fleeting, autumn is a season of astounding beauty — the changing leaves, the ornamental flourishes of grass seedpods, and the return of misty mornings that nourish the landscape.
Cornell Farm's Fall Favorites
Fall is one of the absolute best times of year to plant. The return of the rainy season creates a rich canvas with less pressure to water — plus, as the temperatures outside drop, the soil is an energy bank that lags behind the air to remain warm and microbially active. This means that your new plant can channel all of its energy into growing a robust root system over the fall and winter. For these reasons, many gardeners and landscapers consider this to be the best time to plant trees and shrubs.
If spring color is your jam, fall is the prime time to plant bulbs like tulips, crocuses, hyacinths, and more. After a low-maintenance winter of incubating underground, they'll magically emerge with delightful early spring colors!
Our best selection of bulbs arrives in September, right in time to plant.
Bulbs 101Home-grown garlic unlocks a diverse range of flavors you won't find in the grocery store. Dozens of varieties deliver their own unqiue flavor profiles, from mellow and fragrant to bold and spicy. Like bulbs, garlic cloves can be planted in autumn and virtually left to their own devices to grow throughout the winter for a zesty spring or early-summer harvest.
VIDEO: Planting AlliumsFall clean-up can be a divisive topic in the gardening world. While many homeowners like to meticulously rake away leaves and trim spent plants for a tidy aesthetic, there are powerful ecological benefits to keeping the autumn garden a little wild.
Our gardens can provide critical habitat for wildlife. Spent perennial stems become winter homes for pollinators, while dried seedheads are an important cold-season food source for our local birds. Since these tiny neighbors' populations have decreased drastically over the past few decades, it's more important than ever to make space for them in our home landscapes.
For many of us, rakes and leafblowers are as much of an autumn tradition as pumpkins. The movement to "Leave the Leaves" encourages us to rethink these pesky piles as important habitat. Thousands of species of insects use leaf litter to overwinter and reproduce, so removing or shredding leaves can have unintended impacts on the web of life.
Still, what do you do with all those leaves? We're big fans of leaving certain areas of your garden aside as habitat zones, so using leaves as a natural mulch for those zones can be a comfortable compromise. Another advantage of this approach: fallen leaves are packed with nitrogen and other nutrients that can feed your garden's soil as the organic matter decomposes!)
It can be a tricky balance to keep your garden looking neat as perennials begin to rest for the winter. Similar to leaf piles, spent stems can actually be valuable habitat for bees and other insects, while residual seed heads make an excellent winter food source for birds. Some gardeners leave the tidying for spring, but, if you feel compelled to tidy up at the end of the growing season, leaving the cut stems in the garden can still allow beneficial insects to utilize your garden as their winter home.
No matter your taste, there around certain plants that you should avoid trimming back until they naturally decompose on their own. Peonies, echinacea, and penstemon are just a few common garden plants that benefit from finishing the season on their own time.
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