Bring It Home: Fall Color

 

Thousands of folks visit North Georgia each fall to take in the beauty of the fall foliage. I love to do that myself but you’d be surprised at how seldom that happens, even for retired folks! Poor weather, errands, being sick, volunteering – these all get in the way of a timely visit and then the leaves are gone. That’s why I like to recommend incorporating good fall color plants into designed landscapes so that you bring some of that beauty home.

A photo taken by my friend Sheri; it is a shopping mall parking lot 

As I write this on a crisp fall day, a light wind is blowing leaves all around but plenty remain on the trees: the golden leaves of tuliptree (Liriodendron tulipifera), ash (Fraxinus spp.) and hickory (Carya spp.); reddish leaves of black gum (Nyssa sylvatica), flowering dogwood (Cornus florida) and sumac (Rhus spp.); orange Sassafras and serviceberry (Amelanchier spp.); pink-purple sourwood (Oxydendrum arboreum) are all consistent in their colors while the red maple (Acer rubrum) varies from tree to tree: yellow, orange, and even brilliant red.

Serviceberry in my yard

Oaks in a parking lot

Among those trees there is still plenty of green; an essential component of appreciating fall color are the occasional pops of green. In addition to the pine trees, many of the oak (Quercus spp.) and American beech (Fagus grandifolia) trees have yet to turn. They provide the later hues of fall colors: deep burgundies and rich honey browns.

As much as you plan for spring blooms, take some time to plan for fall color too and enjoy the change of seasons right from your own window. For ideas on plants to use, see my earlier blog: The Fall Color Compilation.

Maple in my yard

Sourwood on a country road

Out My Front Door

 

I love the views and the wildlife interactions that I get right outside my own front door. Watching the trees turn color this week in the front was just one more reminder of how important it is to me to put the plants I love where I can see them the most.

This week's view: Viburnum prunifolium (purple)
with the orange foliage of serviceberry (Amelanchier)

I've written before about considering that your front yard can be every much a part of your habitat garden. You can read that post here. For me, the front yard is the part of my yard that I see the most. My back yard is entirely natural and feels like you just wandered into a woodland, so I use my front yard to create organized beds of native perennials and shrubs.

My birdbath and hummingbird feeders are in the front and I pop out daily to check on them. I use the driveway as an informal potting area, walk along the sidewalk to get the mail, and often go out to check on what’s blooming and what bugs are using the plants.

In the spring, shrubs like native azaleas, viburnums, mountain laurel, blueberries, and serviceberry bloom above the coreopsis, columbine, penstemon, bluebells, trillium, and pussytoes.

A butterfly on the azalea on the front corner of the house

In the summer, I have St. Johns wort, summersweet, pagoda dogwood, sundrops, spiderwort, coneflower, black-eyed Susan, milkweed, hibiscus, partridge pea, cardinal flower, and mountain mint. It is a joy to watch both adults and juveniles enjoy the plants.

Cloudless sulphur on partridge pea

Cloudless sulphur on cardinal flower

In the fall, the asters run wild while sunflowers, turtlehead, boneset, and blue mistflower rise above them. Every moment out my front door is a joy to me. Make your front yard one of your happy spots too!

The bumblebees adore the fall asters

Diversity in Your Garden

 

Monarch on fall-blooming aster

When I go to the grocery store, I’m happiest to find a good selection of foods: different choices of bread, more than one kind of pasta sauce, and enough yogurt selections to make one cry (so many choices!). 

In some cases – such as having plant-based milks in addition to dairy milk choices – it can make a difference for specialized diets. 

When wildlife comes to your garden, a diversity of plants helps improve the chances that there will be a little something for everyone too.

Here are three reasons why it’s important to have a diversity of plants.

Different plants support different insects.

·         There are insects who rely on different plants because they have specialized abilities to extract nectar and pollen. Bees, wasps, beetles, flies, and even hummingbirds have tongues long and short to match the flowers that they have evolved to visit. The Southeastern blueberry bee is just one such insect that has a specialized relationship with a plant.

·         Insect herbivores, the ones that eat the foliage of plants, also have specific relationships with plants. Consider our state butterfly, the Eastern Tiger Swallowtail, who needs one of four host plants on which to lay her eggs. Without having one of those host plants in your garden, you won’t be able to support the continued population of that butterfly. Or consider a more extreme example: the monarch butterfly that can only use one plant.

The Southeastern blueberry bee in April

Different plants bloom at different times, providing nectar and pollen to insects whose life cycles vary or who have a life cycle that spans multiple seasons.

·         Choose plants that bloom in spring, as early as late March for the metro Atlanta area and even earlier in the Coastal Plain. Research what is appropriate for your area/ecoregion as those plants will more closely align with insect activity. Here is my spring list for the metro Atlanta area.

·         Choose plants that bloom in the summer. Most perennials have a defined bloom time so you’ll want a variety of different choices. Some of them have repeat blooming, such as the hyssops (Agastache) or you might consider some native annuals. Here is my summer list.

·         Choose plants that bloom in the fall. We have migrating butterflies that need to fuel up as they head south. Bees like bumble bees are active almost until frost, helping to provision the nest with next year’s generation of pollinators. Key plants include asters, goldenrods, and some of those native annuals. Here is my fall list.

 

Blue mistflower (Conoclinium coelestinum)
attracts a lot of butterflies and bees in the fall

Different plants won’t all be affected by the same pathogen or destructive event. Occasionally “things happen” and plants that we carefully set into our garden get damaged (at my house, it might mean deer browsing the tops off a group of plants). So while the coneflower you planted might get set back, the mountain mint is going strong, and the black-eyed Susans are right behind them.

Evaluate your garden during the seasons, and then start to fill in the blooming blanks. Everyone will enjoy the extra diversity.

October 2022 Moment in Nature

This month's #amomentinnature is a bit of a look forward, a preview of fall color. I spotted this sassafras tree on the small road that leads to my neighborhood and the pop of color caught my eye.

Sassafras (Sassafras albidum)

Sassafras (Sassafras albidum) is generally a medium-sized tree that is one of our earliest trees to color up in the fall. If you're looking for good sources of color for your own landscape, visit my earlier blog on Dependable Fall Color.

In the meantime, keep your eyes peeled for early color and enjoy it while it lasts.

Hike Local: Gold Branch Trail

 

I have been anxious to get outside of my own yard for several weeks (but not willing to go too far) so this week I visited one of the Chattahoochee NRA hikes in East Cobb County: the Gold Branch Trail. It is one of 15 metro Atlanta area units of the Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area (CRNRA), part of the National Park Service. This park is just down the road from the Chattahoochee Nature Center in Roswell.

This trail is 3.8 miles long with options to make it a shorter experience. It traverses mostly easy paths (but tree roots require careful treading) in a classic Piedmont forest with areas that border Bull Sluice Lake, a lake created when Morgan Falls Dam was built in 1904. There are a few areas with more challenging sections so a hiking pole or walking stick is very useful. I found this description very helpful. We ended up turning inland at point GB9 and clocked in at 2.3 miles. The trail has excellent signage at every junction point but no benches.

Good trail signs at every junction

The beginning of the path is a thick forest of oak and American beech that slopes down to a stream. The first flower that we saw was an abundant population of beechdrops (Epifagus virginiana). It was a while before we saw any other flowers in this deep forest (although the faded foliage of some spring ephemerals was present), but the diversity of plants overall was wonderful. I saw umbrella magnolia (Magnolia tripetala), numerous species of oaks and hickories, spicebush (Lindera benzoin), American hornbeam (Carpinus caroliniana), hophornbeam (Ostrya virginiana), sourwood (Oxydendrum arboreum), fringetree (Chionanthus virginicus), and a huge population of dwarf paw paw (Asimina parviflora).

Epifagus virginiana

Beechdrops with beech tree

As we approached the water near point 6, the canopy was more open and blooming white wood aster (Eurybia divaricata), white snakeroot (Ageratina altissima), and bluestem goldenrod (Solidago caesia) – all shade tolerant fall wildflowers – were blooming here and there.

Asimina parviflora

Symplocos tinctoria

More woody goodies along the path in this area were chalkbark maple (Acer leucoderme), horse sugar (Symplocos tinctoria), sparkleberry (Vaccinium arboreum), and dwarf rhododendron (Rhododendron minus). At the water’s edge were moisture-loving plants like doghobble (Leucothoe fontanesiana), river birch (Betula nigra), hazel alder (Alnus serrulata), and Virginia sweetspire (Itea virginica). Water horehound (Lycopus americanus), cardinal flower (Lobelia cardinalis) and sneezeweed (Helenium autumnale) were enjoying the wet edges as well.

Lobelia cardinalis

Helenium autumnale

As we turned back inland at point 9, we found a different collection of plants including sweetshrub (Calycanthus floridus), American holly (Ilex opaca), rusty blackhaw (Viburnum rufidulum), mapleleaf viburnum (V. acerifolium), and red buckeye (Aesculus pavia). All along the way we saw numerous native ferns (Christmas, broad beech, sensitive) and perennials (bloodroot, black cohosh). The diversity at this unit is a great representation of Piedmont plants.

Chalkbalk maple (Acer leucoderme) showing early color

Invasive species impact was fairly low. We saw some privet (Ligustrum sinense), Elaeagnus, and a princess tree (Paulownia tomentosa) plus a bunch of Jorō spiders. I found just one tiny sprig of English ivy when I went in for a close photo on something low.

If you visit this or any of the CRNRA units, a pass or fee is required: a $5 daily fee (pay on your smartphone), a CRNRA annual pass, or an America is Beautiful NPS pass. Get out and visit your local parks for short trips (and volunteer to help with projects if you are really local!).