Now is the perfect time to put a few plans in place to make sure your garden looks good for the next few months and sails into fall with style. A pretty autumn-blooming vine here, a refreshed hanging basket there, a DIY run of stepping stones to keep your lawn looking good once the rain arrives and a sprinkling of fast-to-flower bulbs, and your garden will look a thousand dollars come October. And you’ll have achieved it on a shoestring.
Acting in August means plants have time to settle their roots into the ground before flowering, and you can take advantage of late-summer sales. The weather is warm enough for freshly-planted additions to grow strongly, and for you to enjoy spending a few hours over the weekend in the garden. Wait another month before you start thinking about your fall garden, however, and you’ll have to pay more for an instant upgrade.
All these ideas are quick, easy and don’t cost a fortune: which will be best to bring late-season style to your garden on a budget?
1. Bury Bulbs in Your Lawn For Flowers in 8 Weeks
Most fall-flowering bulbs need to be planted in spring, but get Crocus sativus into the ground in September and it quickly blooms in 6-10 weeks for blooms in October to November. The flowers are small, reaching just 3-6 inches high, but they’re the most beautiful azure blue color that’s a wonderful contrast to the fiery tones of fall.
You can buy 20 Croscus sativus bulbs from Jackson & Perkins for $17.95 and, by burying them in your lawn or the front of a border, create drifts of fall flowers very cheaply. You’ll have stopped mowing your lawn by the time the bulbs flower, and they’re hardy in zones 3-8 so will bring blooms for years. You can dig up and separate the clumps every 3-4 years, too, for free plants and lots more flowers.
2. Refresh Hanging Baskets With Cheery Pansies
After the heatwave summer we’ve had, your hanging baskets will be looking pretty tired by now, but it’s a quick and easy job to freshen them for flowers all through fall. The Plentifall series of pansies flower most profusely through fall, winter and spring in zones 6 through 8, but cope with chilly temperatures down to zone 3, so simply find them a sheltered spot in colder zones for lots of blooms. The 1” flowers are edible for attractive garnishes on sweet or savoury dishes, too.
Plentifall pansies have a trailing habit so will spill from a hanging basket, growing 8-10 inches high and 18-24 inches wide. Burpee is currently offering four plants for $13.95 with three varieties to choose from: Plentifall Lavender Blue Pansies have pretty blue to deep purple petals; elegant Plentifall White Pansies have dainty yellow and purple centers; Plentifall Frost Pansies fall between the two with a range of pale tones from white to lavender.
There are so many creative ways to turn cheap bedding plants into fabulous garden details, so as well as refreshing hanging baskets, consider using Plentifall pansies to add some other accents to your fall backyard.
3. Forage for Natural Accents
Topping patio pots or borders with a pinecone mulch brings so much texture and autumn style to a garden, and doesn’t cost a penny. It’ll help insulate the soil, too, helping to protect roots from below-zero temperatures once winter arrives.
Another way to use foraged materials as fall garden decor is to wind colored yarn or twine around sticks pushed into the soil.
4. DIY a Water Feature to Light Up Evenings
Nights draw in surprisingly quickly in fall and by the end of October, the sun has set by 6pm across much of the country. A lovely way to light darker evenings on the patio is with a DIY illuminated water feature made with a solar-powered floating fountain with LEDs. All you need to is a watertight vessel such as this cheap polyresin tub from Lowe’s and a $15 floating fountain with LEDs and a built-in battery like this flower-shaped solar fountain from Amazon. Get creative and you could even make a water-feature planter to pretty-up your patio for fall.
5. Add Long-Lasting Flowers With Sedum ‘Autumn Joy’
Being a succulent, Sedum spectabile ‘Autumn Joy’ is one of the easiest fall-flowering plants to grow. It’s a reliable bloomer from late summer all through autumn and practically grows itself, pretty much anywhere. The blooms change color, too, opening a pale pink before morphing into a rosier pink and finally turning a rich copper. While you can remove the faded flower stems after the first frost, most folk leave the dried flat-topped flowers as winter structure.
Happy in sun or partial shade in zones 4-9, perennial Sedum ‘Autumn Joy’ plants in 1 gallon pots are available from Garden Goods Direct. If you love the long display of color-change blooms, Dutch Grown stock bare root Sedum ‘Autumn Joy’ for a third of the price. While bare root sedums can be planted now, they won’t flower this year, this is an economical way to add lots of blooms for fall next year.
6. Add Fall Accents to Containers
While there are plenty of late-season heroes that reliably bloom through summer and into fall, year after year, buying full-size, ready-to-flower plants now can be expensive. Because these plants give an instant reward of bonny blooms, garden centers and online retailers are able to charge premium prices. Wait until spring to buy them, however, and fall bloomers will be far cheaper – and will establish far better in your garden to boot as they’ll have months to focus on growing a supportive root system before the stress of creating flowers.
So what to do with your patio pots if you’re on a tight budget? The solution is to buy better-value plants that rely on features other than flowers to add eye-catching details to containers.
Frilly leaves
As temperatures cool, the tones of the leaves become more intense, bringing vibrant violet shades to a planter.
Bright balls
This compact plant looks great tucked into a fall pot with its colorful display of yellow, orange and red round fruit.
Cascading blades
With evergreen blades that cascade in graceful arching shapes, this ornamental grass is a texture treat.
7. Make a Foraged Wreath
It’s a quick and enjoyable task for a sunny afternoon to forage for stems to create a wreath. The advantage of doing this in August or early September is that the still-warm weather with allow the stems to dry in place and last for months. My foolproof method to create a wreath for my autumn garden is to use twine to tie small bunches of stems tegether, then attach those onto a wooden hoop with wire – the less attention I pay to making it pretty, the better it always looks!
Find a spot out of the midday sun to hang your wreath so lasts for longer, bringing fall style to your yard for very little effort or outlay.
8. Make a Stepping-Stone Path Across Your Lawn
This is a great job to do ahead of fall and winter and save your grass from being damaged as you cross your lawn in wet or frozen weather. You can often pick up end-of-line pavers very cheaply from hardware stores, or look for purpose-made stepping stones on online middleman retailers, such as this four-pack of stepping stones from Wayfair with change from $50.
Lay your stepping stones across your lawn at a comfortable stride width – and do practise walking up and down them to make sure of the distances – then use a drizzle of sand around the perimeter of each to mark their positions. Set the pavers aside then remove the turf and excavate enough soil to accommodate the depth of the paver plus around 1½ inches. Pack the holes with sharp sand then lay the paver on top so it’s a fraction below grass level, enabling you to run a lawnmower over the top.
9. Plant a Fall-Flowering Clematis
One the quickest and easiest ways to zhuzh up your garden for fall is with some fencescaping to turn a boundary from boring to beautiful. And one of the quickest and easiest ways to do that is to plant a fall-flowering clematis.
In a sunny spot, you won’t do better than the Happy Jack Purple clematis vine, available from Plant Addicts, trouble-free to grow in zones 5-9 and abundant with intensely-colored autumn flowers that turn into sculptural seedheads through winter. For a shadier spot, Samaritan Jo clematis, also available from Plant Addicts, is a surefire bet – it’s just as well-behaved and has silvery lavender-hued blooms in zones 4-9. Both these vines need cutting to a foot above the ground in spring so are easy to keep to a compact size.
10. Paint Your Shed or Fence
Late August or September is a great time of year to paint a fence or shed as wood has dried out through summer, lower humidity helps the paint dry evenly and moderate temperatures mean it doesn’t dry too fast and crack. Painting wood now also protects it from the wet weather to come, so check the forecast for a dry spell and get cracking!
Current trends are veering towards dark colors in a matt finish that make a small garden appear bigger and create a backdrop to show off flowers and foliage. Our choice for easy application and a good finish is Glidden Fundamentals Exterior Paint, available from Walmart in a wide range of attractive colors including smart Pine Forest Green, appealing Cavalry Navy Blue and go-with-everything Stone’s Throw Gray.
Do one, two or all 10 of these budget garden ideas in August or early September and your garden will look fabulous all through fall, and you’ll enjoy maximum backyard style for your hard-earned bucks.
