Heidi Brosseau from our retail staff submits the following blog:

Feeling Fall – by Heidi Brosseau

 

 

 

School is in session.  Our spring is back in the company of teachers, crowded hallways, cafeterias, and library books.  Football practice has begun.  Plaid woolen blankets and stadium seat cushions are finding their way back into the trunk next to the umbrella and jumper cables.  Soon the ice scraper will join them there,  Painted leaves will line the sidewalk aisle through the yard.  I can imagine them rustling under someone’s step.  Sound and smell rising up for recognition.  The imprint of sounds and smells that have never disappointed.  Reminders of leaf piles, sweaters, blue autumn skies & scratchy woolen blankets.

Planters and window boxes all around town and across the street have replaced their summer petunias and geraniums with mums and ornamental kale.  Their swollen buds foreshadow a vivid and colorful fall.  They ease our transition as summer slips away degree by degree.  Fuzzy purple grass tails beg to be petted.  Can you keep from reaching out and feeling fall?

Give your tired baskets and containers a late summer boost!  Large and showy Minnesota hardy and decorative mums fill bare spots quickly and affordably.  Perfect additions for late season color!  Tuck in one or two flowering kale for texture, a very touchable ornamental grass for movement and grace and voila!  You’re ready for autumn.  Stop in for a little inspiration or let us do the work for you… We have an assortment of Fall Beauty Planters all potted up and ready to go!

Don’t forget your flower beds and landscapes.  Here is a list of our favorite fall performing perennials, vines and shrubs for Minnesota!

Perennials:

Amsonia – Bright yellow fall foliage.

Asters – Purple, Pink or Blue flowers.

Bergenia – Red fall foliage.

Cranesbill – Red and orange fall foliage.

Feather Reed Grass, Karl Foerster – Strongly vertical with buff colored plumes.

Flame Grass – Showy silvery plumes above flame colored grasses.

Hardy Mums – Yellow, Red, Russet, maroon, pink, purple or orange flowers.

Heuchera, Tiarella, and Heucherella – Assorted foliage colors and textures including purple, maroon, rust, and gold.

Little Bluestem – Blue grass turns to purple-maroon in fall.

Sedums – Pink or ivory flowers in fall above succulent leaves.

Switch Grass, Northwind – Our 2014 Perennial of the year.  Graceful vase shaped clumps of clean green grass turn a brilliant gold in fall.

 

Shrubs: 

Barberry – Green leaved varieties have red all color.

Blueberries – Surprised?! Yep these productive fruit bearing beauties have one more late season trick up their sleeve.  Showy fall color.

Burning bush – Tis the season for these guys to show how they got that name.

Chokeberry – Jet black fruit feeds migrating birds and a bright orange red mix of fall color attracts us.

Hazelnuts – Yes they do actually produce edible nuts and they also produce bright orange-red and yellow fall color.

Hydrangeas – Flowers mature in late summer to rosy pink for many varieties and blossoms last well into winter.

Serviceberry – Another favorite of migrating birds.

Red, orange and golden fall color on this shrub or ornamental tree.

Sumac – This is The bright red foliage you are seeing in the ditches.

Tor Birch leaf spirea – Maroon fall foliage. A newer favorite of ours.

Winterberry – Not so much the foliage color as it is the vivid red fruit.  The Cedar waxwings may steel them before you can enjoy them though.

Witch Hazel – Bright golden-yellow foliage disguises Witch Hazel’s fun little secret.  They bloom in the late fall.  Bright gold spider like flowers are a fun and unique surprise at the end of summer.

Vines:

Autumn Revolution Bittersweet – Bright orange capsule pop open to reveal vivid red fruit inside.  A favorite choice for drying and fall decorating.

Red Wall & Yellow Wall Engleman Ivy – As their names imply, one has red and one has yellow fall color.