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Funky Fall Container Gardening

Small pumpkin teacup with flowers
A small pumpkin makes a whimsical “ teacup.”

A “funky” fall container planting is any combination of container, plants and other materials that is unusual, quaint or full of unique character. Just about any vessel can serve as a planter, from old shoes to hollowed-out pumpkins. Add further funkiness by filling with unusually colored or fancifully arranged seasonal plants and enhance the display with interesting elements including fruits, vegetables, dried flowers, and even garden implements. Imagination is the only limit. The cost of these container arrangements varies widely, depending on the choice of individual elements, but in reality, funkiness is priceless.

Consider Containers

To find unusual containers, look around your kitchen, garage, cellar or attic. Anything that can hold soil can hold plants. Think about the fall theme and use an old trick-or-treat bucket, wooden fruit basket or an assortment of canning jars. With a little paint and/or stencils, a terra cotta plant pot can take on bright fall hues or vivid patterns. Hot glue ears of decorative Indian corn all the way around a straight-sided plastic plant pot for an inexpensive funky effect.

Watering can as a planter with flowers
Anything that can hold soil can serve as a planter.

If you don’t want your container of choice to serve as a permanent plant pot, simply place the plants in a slightly smaller plastic pot and drop into the container. Use sheet moss to disguise the edges of the plastic pot, if necessary.
Hollowed-out pumpkins and gourds, available in many sizes and shapes, also make excellent temporary planters. When you are carving pumpkins, clean out an extra one and use it to hold an ornamental cabbage, an arrangement of pansies, mums and curly willow or multi-colored dyed cattails. A carved pumpkin looks especially funky with ornamental grass “hair” emerging from its open top. A large, swan-shaped gourd is transformed into an unusual container when you hollow out its middle and insert trailing variegated ivy.

Plant Choices

Ornamental cabbages in pumpkin
Big, bold ornamental cabbages pair well with bright orange pumpkins.

For a funky take on a traditional favorite, seek out and combine unusually-colored mums. Vibrant tropical stalwarts, like crotons (Codiaeum variegatum var. pictum) and calathea or peacock plant (Calathea makoyana) amp up the color quotient and might be paired with brightly colored pansies or dahlias for eye-catching container displays that will last outdoors as long as nighttime temperatures stay above the low fifties.

Ornamental cabbages and kales are a great choice for funky fall container plantings. By themselves, they resemble giant green, white, purple or variegated roses. A purple cabbage planted in a large, hollowed-out pumpkin makes a neat contrast with orange and yellow pansies or mums. A hollowed-out acorn squash might make a one-of-a-kind planter for multi-colored coleus (Solenostemon scutellarioides).

Prepping the Planters

If planters will remain outdoors in below-freezing temperatures, make sure that both containers and plants can withstand the rigors of the climate. For permanent and temporary container arrangements, start with a quality potting medium, like Fafard Natural and Organic Potting Mix. Make sure containers have drainage holes. Firm soil around plants and water well before inserting decorative elements such as curly willow branches. If you are using hollowed-out pumpkins or gourds, drop in containerized plants or line each pumpkin or gourd with a plastic bag before filling with potting medium. This makes it much easier to relocate the plants once the pumpkins have passed their prime.

Pumpkins and gourds, when displayed outside, may also attract the attention of squirrels or other hungry animals. To discourage destruction of your unique creations, spray the finished products with an organic deer/animal repellent.

October is the perfect time for a final horticultural hurrah before the cold weather sets in. Celebrate plants and imagination by creating some funky fall container arrangements.

Flowers in watering cans
Find funky containers in garages and attics.

Annuals for Fantastic Fall Color

Pennisetum 'Rubrum'
Pennisetum ‘Rubrum’ has reddish foliage and grassy plumes that look great until frost. (photo by Jessie Keith)

Many gardens lack for fall color – prompting many gardeners to resort to the ubiquitous fall mum.  Often overlooked, however, are the numerous other annuals for autumn display, many of which come into their glory months before chrysanthemum season.  Their beauty, longevity, and relative novelty make them a refreshing and often preferable alternative to what has become a fall garden cliché.

Chinese Hound’s Tongue

The dazzling, October-sky-blue flowers of Chinese hound’s tongue (Cynoglossum amabile) give the impression of a tall, out-of-season forget-me-not (Myosotis).  In all respects, however, this biennial outshines its spring-blooming cousin, possessing a much longer, summer-to-fall flowering season, as well as attractive, fuzzy, gray-green basal leaves that persist rather than turning to mush.  Sown directly in the garden in spring, it will bear a late-summer to frost succession of clustered blooms on upright stems.  Plants usually self-sow, but not with the prolific abandon of forget-me-not.  Available as seed or occasionally as plants, Chinese hound’s tongue is typically sold in the form of dwarf varieties such as ‘Firmament’, which top out at about 15 inches.  It reaches its zenith, however, in full-size forms (including ‘Blue Showers’), which can reach 30 inches tall.  This East-Asian native takes well to sunny or partly shaded cottage gardens and mixed borders, partnering beautifully with Japanese anemones, colchicums, and other late-blooming perennials.  Dwarf forms do nicely in containers as well as in the open garden.

Woodland Tobacco

Salvia elegans 'Golden Delicious'
Beautiful red flowers and golden leaves make Salvia elegans ‘Golden Delicious’ a great sage for season’s end.

There’s nothing dwarf about woodland tobacco (Nicotiana sylvestris), a lordly, bold-leaved, delightfully shaggy plant that holds slender silky-white trumpets on lofty stems that look you in the eye.  Blooming alongside (and above) Chinese hound’s tongue from summer to fall, this heat- and sun-loving tender perennial is also a reliable self-sower, with spontaneous seedlings almost always appearing in spring.  Debuting in mid to late summer and continuing in abundance until frost, the flowers cast an intense, intoxicating, musky-sweet perfume that peaks at night, drawing pollinating moths.  Hummingbirds visit during the day.  Plants can be started from seed sown under cover in early spring, or in the garden at tomato-planting time.  Seedlings (which are sometimes available from nurseries) should be planted out after the last frost date.  Fertile, moist soil is best.

Butter Daisy

For containers and other niches where something more chrysanthemum-like is desired, butter daisy (Melampodium paludosum) is just the ticket.  Low, mounded, bushy, and brassy-flowered, it envelops itself with petite golden-yellow daisies for many weeks beginning in summer.  Seed catalogs and nurseries sell numerous compact varieties, all of which form tight, 8- to 12-inch hummocks of oval, weakly toothed, mid-green leaves, with flowers appearing about 3 months after sowing.  Given a fertile, not overly dry soil, plants will continue blooming profusely until the first heavy frost.  Native to Mexico and Central America, this annual can take the heat and will seed itself around in warmer gardens.

Fall Salvias

Mexico is also home to several cold-tender, shrubby sages notable for their showy late-season bloom.  Among the best are Salvia greggii and its hybrids, which throw numerous spires of richly hued, hummingbird-thronged flowers from late spring until frost.  Cultivars include compact ‘Ultra Violet’ , with vibrant rose-purple flowers on 18-inch stems, and the fiery-flowered ‘Furman’s Red’, whose cherry-vermillion wands can reach 3 feet tall.  At least a dozen other tender Salvia species are indispensable contributors to the fall (and summer) garden, thriving in any well-drained, reasonably fertile growing medium, preferably in full sun.  Salvia elegans ‘Golden Delicious’ is a gold-leaved, red-flowered selection with a, particularly beautiful fall display. Most of the shrubby salvias perform splendidly in containers as well as in the open garden, and a few will survive USDA Zone 6 winters.

Beta vulgaris ssp. cicla 'Ruby Red'
Colorful Swiss chard looks and tastes best in fall.

Red Fountain Grass

The arching, brown-purple leaves of red fountain grass (Pennisetum ‘Rubrum’) make the perfect foil to salvias and other bright summer- and fall bloomers.  Tawny, purple-tinged, plumed flower spikes arch above the foliage in summer and fall.  Thought to be a hybrid of Pennisetum setaceum (although usually listed as a cultivar of same), ‘Rubrum’ rarely self-sows, unlike its prodigiously fertile parent.  At 3 to 4 feet tall and wide, it works wonderfully in large containers or mixed plantings in full sun or light shade.  Typically grown as an annual, it’s a hardy perennial in USDA Zones 9 and warmer.

Swiss Chard

The roster of showy-leaved fall annuals also includes several varieties of chard.  Sow the seeds in summer for a fall display of large, crinkled, often bronze-suffused leaves, with vividly contrasting ribs and veins.  Most named varieties (such as yellow-ribbed ‘Oriole’ and burgundy-ribbed ‘Rhubarb’) feature one contrasting color, but the mix ‘Bright Lights’ contains numerous hues including red, yellow, orange, purple, and creamy white.  Chard’s close cousin, the beet, has also given rise to some showy-leaved varieties.  Among the most notable is ‘Bull’s Blood’, whose deep maroon leaves make for good eating as well as for good ornament.  As with chard, plants mature in fall from a summer sowing. and provide a welcome change of pace from ornamental kale.