Favorite Fall Flowers in Our Landscape

Favorite Fall Flowers In Our Landscape

By Jan Rodda

I call them my Van Gogh bouquets.  Brown clay pots, one an antique salt jar, the other an old baked bean pot, are filled with sunflowers, orange dahlias, multi-colored zinnias, and purple asters, with the bright yellow blossoms of Rudbeckia ‘Herbstonne’ dancing above.   I’m in heaven in August when the sunflowers and orange dahlias are in their full glory.  I even painted our kitchen/family room a soft yellow to compliment these arrangements.  I love large bouquets of fresh flowers on our dining room table and the corner of our kitchen island.  Consequently, the landscaped beds around our house and our large vegetable garden are filled with my favorite fall blooming perennials and annuals.

I have carried Rudbeckia ‘Herbstonne’ through three house moves.  In 1973, a small clump was shared by an elderly neighbor who could tell that I loved flowers.  She didn’t know what it was, just that it was “very special.”  I didn’t know what it was either, but it grew 6 feet tall and needed to be tied up.  As the clumps have grown and been divided, Rudbeckia ’Herbstonne’ has provided a cloud of cheery yellow on grey days throughout the fall in each house we’ve lived in.  It’s the perfect cut flower, long-lasting in a vase as filler between larger, showier blossoms, or as a light, airy bouquet on its own.  And the birds, especially the chickadees, love the seed heads.

Clumps of purple and blue Michaelmas daisies, Aster novi-belgii, have also moved with us from house to house.  They provide a foil in our autumn landscape for the reds and oranges of our Japanese maples and dogwood.  Their small, upturned flowers attract butterflies, and finches enjoy these seed heads.  Their deep purple color provides a strong, contrasting filler in my flower arrangements.

And then there are the dahlias!  We inherited large orange dahlias from the previous owner 10 years ago when we moved to our present house.  And I was not particularly fond of orange.  But they’ve stolen my heart.  The most wonderful ones have masses of very contorted petals, twisting every which way. How very Van Gogh!  And they look great with sunflowers.

Multi-colored sunflowers and zinnias are planted from seed every year in our vegetable garden, purely for cutting.  I think zinnias are a most satisfactory flower both for the garden and the house.  The blossoms on stiff, upright stems last forever in a vase and in the garden.  And the bright pinks, reds, and yellows remind me of the vibrancy of Mexican color combinations and saris in India.  Sunflowers in every hue, from light yellow through the golds to deep burnt orange provide the foundation for my fall arrangements and make for happy chickadees hanging upside down from drying seed heads.