Fall Fun

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The better part of fall is the harvest from the garden.  The pumpkins, the brussel sprouts and cabbage, the Romanesco broccoli, and the squashes are as delightful to look at as eat.  The gourds in irresistible shapes and intense colors make you want to decorate something.  I am glad to have something celebratory for the season.  As I mentioned before, the cabbages and kales top my list of great fall  plants.  The centerpiece in the above pictured pot is unabashedly fake-just a little fall fun.  This client owns a business set back quite some distance from the road.  These tall and brightly colored picks, wired into a post of  natural cedar whips, get some attention.  The store looks dressed for fall. 

2007 Payne Fall (17)Window boxes of size permit expression of size.  These boxes are viewed primarily from a garden room indoors, so big and striking, and not too tall,  is the order of the day.  As they face the south, and are somewhat protected from freezing winds and cold temperatures, these boxes prosper late into the fall season and through Thanksgiving.

DSC_0005Whomever it was who invented stick stacks, I thank them.  These 6 foot stacks comprised of wood cut into quarter inch by quarter inch squares are uniformly vertical when they go in a pot.  A piece of steel rebar is driven deep into the pots, and the stack wired to it.  This keeps the centerpiece from tilting.  Funny how an element askew has that air of neglect about it.  I like to see people keeping up the appearance of their homes from the street.  Stick stacks change in appearance with exposure to weather.  As the wood absorbs moisture from the air, they curve away from the center in a very graceful way.  The preserved green eucalyptus weathers just about anything.

Tender #2 (1)Tender is a fabulous dress shop that is known for its cutting edge fashion.  Their fall pots are dressy.  Maple leaves coated in copper shine, as do the pumpkins with a dusting of gold. Integrifolia dyed an intense shade of fall orange compliment the dyed pencil thin willow sticks.  Orange and white pansies complete the ensemble.

Dunker 2006 (1)This narrow courtyard, part of a condominium, is organized around four very large white concrete pots inlaid with bands of curved stainless steel wire.  Fiber pots painted white in galvanized steel stands are home to my client’s tomato plants in the summer; the tall kale, pansies, and creeping jenny compliment the cabbages and ivy in the concrete pots in both form and feeling. 

2005 Wasserman1005 (1)Lime integrifolia and diamond shaped moss pillows help create a clean and more modern look; not every client is enamoured of pumpkins and the like.  Bleached sticks and pods complete the look.

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Seed pods from tropical countries have an exotic look that adds a lot of interest to a planting of pansies.  These stems are ruggedly weather resistant.  I am not really sure from what plant they come, but the stringy leaf stalks cannot be torn-they must be cut. 

payne halloween 2006 (6)
There are lots of materials available to spice up a fall planting. Any farmer’s market is a great place to find something that might suit you.  Bittersweet, rose hips, dried hydrangea, money plants, thistles and cattails from the roadside-nature provides plenty of bounty at harvest time.

Comments

  1. Love your stuff! Can you tell me where to find “stick stacks”? (used in an urn in Fall Fun, Oct 9, 09)

    Thanks!
    Sara Fryar
    Minneapolis, Mn

    • Deborah Silver says

      Dear Sara, we carry them in early November-we are out now. Maybe a nursery near you will have them?? Check back with me next fall. You might try a local tree trimming service for branches, if you need them now. Deborah

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