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Feel Those Fall Garden Vibes

Spice up your autumn garden with warm hues, berry-bursting blooms and fragrant foliage. It’s the coziest backdrop for enjoying your preferred pumpkin-spiced beverage outdoors.

Fall in South Texas always warms my heart with its beautiful weather and exhilarating snout butterfly explosions — it’s the perfect backdrop for enjoying the outdoors with a pumpkin-spiced drink in hand! 

And creating fall vibes in your garden is as easy as warming up the color palette. Keep the fall vibes going with these simple tips. 

Suffused with autumn color

Saturate your garden with perennial flowers in classic fall colors such as warm reds, oranges and yellow for a natural display of autumn beauty. Selecting analogous or adjacent hues on the color wheel creates a harmonious effect, ideal for an autumn ambiance. Plant predominantly the middle color when you choose three adjacent hues. 

Plan for long-lasting color by using the seasonal stars filter in the Find a Plant section. 

black chinned hummingbird flying over turks cap flowers

Mexican honeysuckle flowers.

Fall focal points

Classy grasses, bright bunches of berries and striking seed heads remind us it is harvest time in the natural world. Choose standout species to create a focal point for your garden and food for wildlife. 

Lindheimer's muhly flowers.

    • Berries: Evergreen sumac flowers draw butterflies and the red seeds are eaten by birds. Chili pequin will spice up your yard and is a bird favorite, as well.

    • Seed heads: I like the look and lovely scent of bee balm, and fuzzy-looking spikes of gayfeather.

Leave your leaves

Gather your leaves into your garden beds for a fall look – after jumping in the leaf pile, of course! The leaves will help protect plant roots, increase water absorption and create a cozy blanket for critters as nighttime temperatures cool, then return nutrients to the soil as they decompose. 

Picture of Sasha Kodet
Sasha Kodet
Sasha Kodet is a conservation planner whose large garden attracts a myriad of wildlife and curious neighbors with minimal water. At SAWS, Kodet develops outdoor programs to help people create their own beautiful, water-saving landscapes. She draws on her two decades of experience as a naturalist, botanical garden educator and event planner. Kodet enjoys (really) long walks in the woods and has thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail and the Long Trail.
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