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.
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.
Whomever 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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Our weather has taken a turn towards fall; today’s 47 degree temperature is all the more chilly for the 35 mile an hour winds. I was so sure I would have my summer flowers into next week. My clients are much more graceful about moving on to the next season than I am-especially those clients with children. The Halloween holiday-what child isn’t entranced by it? A request for fall pots came from a client with children ready to devote the entire month of October to some ghoulishness.
My favorite part of October is that group of leafy plants known as the Brassicas. They come into their own late in the gardening year. Though there is some disagreement about which plants belong to that group, cabbages, kales, cauliflower, and broccoli are prominent members. These cool season annuals are great to eat-but I love how they look. There are many hybrid cabbages and kale that are grown for the beauty of their leaves. As the weather cools, the color intensifies. 
I am indebted to the Brassicas for their scale, mass and texture. Though many plants are tolerant of cold weather – the pansies, certain grasses and so forth-the cabbages and kales can be had of a good size. Our fall season is short, and not so much actual growing goes on. I like planting big right off the bat; some years the fall constitutes but a few weeks. They are not in the least bit fussy about planting depth. If I need to sink them in a pot for a better look, I do so.
A hazelwood stick covered with grapevine is sunk deep in the soil of the pot. Since wind and rain are more than likely, anchoring any dry materials in a sturdy way is essential. The pod sticks resembling a tritoma have been constructed from overscaled seeds. The entire assemby is glued up on the stick, and sealed. I do make a special effort to find materials like this that can withstand blustery weather. 
The finished planting is a great scale with a pot this size. The hazelwood stick repeats the basketweave pattern of the pot, and the light colored seed pod stems make reference to the garden gone to seed. The curvy pods echo the curve of the tall kale leaves. I like fall pots with all manner of things in them that refer to the natural world. 
The happy accident of this planting-how great those pale pods repeat the color and texture of the skeleton. 
The cultivation of dahlias brings to mind the famed Longfellow little girl verse. “When she was good/She was very very good/But when she was bad she was horrid”. Even if you give them everything you’ve got in the way of rich soil, good sun, staking, fertilization, good air circulation and your utmost devotion, it may not be enough. You still need the blessing of the patron saint of all sulky, troublesome prima donna garden flowers-whomever she may be. Not that one could ask for that blessing; it must be bestowed. I do have one client for whom they perform on demand. He says its the soil-I say what he manages with them is magic. 
Some sport blooms so large the word vulgar comes to mind. Some “dinnerplate dahlias” have stems so weak the plant perpetually looks like someone spent the last hour giving them a thorough dressing down. Fungus spreads like crazy from the bottom up; I have grown plenty of dahlia stalks with a few anemic and forlorn flowers on top. When I grow them in pots, I face them down with something that has the decency to grow vigorously, and hide those ungainly dahlia legs. 
So why do I grow them? In a good year, they are magnificent. Loaded with flowers, they remind me of the 19th century flower paintings of Rachel Ruysch; they are supremely grand. The range of colors and forms is astonishing. This dahlia is a “formal decorative” type. Park Princess has petals shaped like quills; this form is known as a “cactus dahlia”. 
I am looking at these dahlias now as they have been at their peak this first week of October. There is something to recommend about how they last into the fall. They do hate cold weather; the best grown dahlias are those that have spent May and June in a greenhouse. They transition from that museum like setting to the Michigan outdoors poorly. It can take weeks before they loose that insulted look, and take hold.
I think a too early planting can set them back such that they never recover. They thrive in that rarefied hothouse atmosphere where wind, bugs, cold soil, and various pathogens are simply not permitted. Dahlias are not great garden plants; they are an event you may wish to attend.
Some of these party girls dress in a way that’s just plain fun to look at. When they are at their overblown best, they make me smile.
What could be better than a giant pot stuffed to overflowing with nicotiana? OK, probably plenty of things, but no doubt I am a big fan of the nicotianas. There are a number of ornamental tobaccos suitable for cultivation in our area. The species nicotiana alata pictured above grows strongly to 30″ or better. It has a loose, rangy, and unstructured habit of growth. Sporting clusters of big leaves at the base, the flowers appear all along thin soft stems. They are indeterminate bloomers; a stalk will continue to elongate and produce flowers for months. Once a stalk blooms out, and starts setting seed, I trim it back. 
A pairing with Panicum Virgatum Dallas Blues makes that grass all the more icy blue in appearance. Grasses can be difficult to do well in a container, as they are stiff, or awkwardly floppy. Nicotiana makes for a graceful ruff here. They are not without their problems, however. The sticky soft succulent stems are a magnet for aphids. Their giant basil leaves sometimes need pruning back when they threaten to smother something else growing at ground level.
But by far and away my favorite is Nicotiana Mutabilis. It grows tall, and billows out over any edge with a cloud of small flowers that dance in the slightest breeze. Can you tell I like it? The flowers range from white to cream to pale pink to rose pink. This big thing requires secure staking from the beginning. It will pick up speed, and send out new growth from the base of the plant as the night temperatures start to cool. 
They are a nuisance to keep deadheaded-I don’t fuss so much with that. Its hard to spot which stems need headling back, and every part of the plant is sticky. This seems a fairly minor problem to me; a well grow stand of mutabilis is enchanting.
You can see the new growth pushing from the base of this pot on both sides; all of this came on strong in September, and will continue until a hard freeze. They also seem much more aphid-resistant than other nicotianas.
The individual flowers are so small and so delicate; the overall picture is delightfully meadow like. All of these nicotianas are a staple of my summer garden.