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By Louise Piechura
Oakland Press, October 15, 2002
Fall's crisp, clear air signals the start of a season
perhaps best known for the joys of fresh apple cider and the drudgery
of raking leaves. In the garden, the gaudy blooms of the summer
succumb to cooler nights and make way for an array of often-overlooked
flowers and ornamental grasses.
Bev Campbell's garden offers an example of how fall
heralds another, albeit subdued season in the garden. Here, softly
rounded vibrant yellow and deep orange zinnias complement spikes
of red salvia. Dahlias' layered blossoms add even more color to
the display around the family's backyard swimming pool.
All of these sun-loving annuals need to be coached
through the autumn months. Faded flowers need to be deadheaded
to make way for more blooms. All of them work well in bouquets.
Not surprising, since Campbell uses flowers from her own garden
in her business designing bouquets and floral displays for weddings
and other occasions.
While the business motivates her to work in the
garden, it's the pleasure she gets from gardening that inspires
her. In the seven years since Campbell, with her husband and their
two daughters, moved to Commerce Township from Toronto, Ontario,
she's graduated from enthusiastic novice to experienced gardener.
As years pass, the family's original flat three-acre
lot evolved into a poolside garden bordered by a berm packed with
plants. The berm offers privacy and, along with the fence used
to discourage the deer, helps define the garden area.
Serious gardening was put on hold until the berm
was in place. "I started planting that (first) summer,"
she says, "I was really a frustrated gardener those first
couple of years. I had daylilies and stuff around the house."
She uses trees and shrubs as the backbone of her
garden design. They provide color and texture throughout the fall.
White blooms of both oakleaf and Annabelle hydrangeas soften the
late summer and early fall garden. "You don't even have to
cut them," Campbell advises. The spent blooms add their own
faded glory to the garden's architecture.
Then there are old standbys like Rose of Sharon,
its blue flowers in cool contrast to the garden's warmer autumn
hues.
Another old-timer, the shrubby potentilla, has a
place in Campbell's garden and in her heart. "People hate
these things but I love them. It's yellow - if you're into yellow."
The low-growing shrub with its bright yellow flowers needs some
trimming to keep from becoming too woody. Cut back the oldest
stems in the winter, advises Campbell. "Cut them to six inches
in February before you have new wood," she says.
"Anthony Waterer" spirea, a deciduous
shrub, starts blooming in the spring and, if spent flowers are
removed, can be encouraged to bloom again later in the season.
Although viburnum bushes welcome summer with white
flowers, their red berries and colorful leaves add rich color
to the fall garden. Campbell's garden features double file viburnum,
a bush with reddish-purple leaves and clusters of bright red berries.
"It has cool leaves, like an accordion leaf. It's wonderful
in arrangements," she says. Another viburnum, the nannyberry
has green berries in late summer that turn red in fall. "It's
great for birds."
Cranberry viburnum has dark green leaves that also
turn red in fall. "It's my all-time favorite shrub,"
she says.
Shrubs are a godsend to the garden. They provide shape and foliage,
continuous color and texture. And for the gardener, they offer
something more.
"Flowers are a lot of work," Campbell
says. "Shrubs aren't that much work."
Using viburnum as a background, Campbell teams it
with that autumn classic, stonecrop or sedem. Near the purple
sedem, she's planted false indigo, a sturdy flower that can grow
up to five feet tall. It blooms in the late spring and early summer.
In the fall, it produces attractive black pods that Campbell uses
as accents in flower arrangements.
Another flower that matches and tops the height
of false indigo, plume poppy, continues to please well into the
fall. Even after its white plume-shaped flowers fade, its palm-shaped
leaves continue to make their contribution to the garden scene.
Golden button top flowers of tansy and yarrow also
claim sunny spots. Both sit atop stalks with fern-like leaves.
Thyme gives up an encore round of flowers. Veronica, which has
tiny flowers on top of spires, can bloom into fall.
Taking advantage of the area around the swimming
pool to showcase tropical plants amid a tumble of rocks, Campbell
pumps up the color scheme with tropical plants. Brilliant red
cannas with coarse textured leaves offer spots of hot color as
the weather cools down. When temperatures begin to really dip,
cannas need to be moved indoors. "You have to pull them up
so the frost won't get them," Campbell says. They can be
returned to the garden after the last frost of spring.
Platter-sized leaves of the aptly named elephant
ears look at home in the garden by the swimming pool. Approaching
five feet high, the plant, grown from a bulb, needs to be taken
inside during the winter.
Across the yard, next to he house stands the six-foot-tall
castor bean, a poisonous plant which rivals the elephant ears
in leafy splendor. After applying a finish to them, Campbell uses
the giant leaves as placemats for some of her table settings.
Tall ornamental grasses such as the yellow-striped
zebra grass, Karl Foerster's feather reed grass and the silver
and white Morning Light miscanthus add drama to the garden throughout
the growing season but especially in the fall.
"Deer don't seem to touch them. They're in their glory this
time of year," she says.
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