These Colorful Annuals Bloom in the Fall.

My garden is magnificent now: people stop in the street and admire it. This time next month it will look like complete crap.

When the zinnias die, the trellises fall, and there are no sunflowers arching into the sky and passionflower vines climbing through the house, my garden becomes dull and monotonous. Like many people, I made the mistake of getting carried away with summer color. (Evergreen? Never met her.)

This year I’m using a new tact. Instead of waiting six long months for the next round of sweet garden candies, I invest heavily in colorful winter annuals. (All of these plants will appear at your garden center when it’s time to bring them in, but you still have the option of growing the flowers yourself if you plant them in a tray in the next few days.)

Evergreen shrubs keep things green

I relented and filled my hell strips with evergreen blueberries, winterberries and huckleberries. Evergreen shrubs will retain their leaves through the most extreme weather conditions, creating a beautiful green appearance. I chose an evergreen clematis to climb the long wall and busied myself with red clover as a ground cover.

Snapdragons bloom again in the fall.

It’s been a terrible year for my early spring snapdragons. However, I always forget that as summer turns to fall, the pictures appear again. Next year I’ll plant them everywhere to fill the late summer/early fall color gap.

Violas (aka pansies)

If you’ve only seen violas in a nursery, you’ve probably seen them in the same tired purples, blues and yellows. It turns out that violas come in a variety of colors, and I currently have about one hundred and fifty forks growing in mulberry, pink, orange and yellow. These gentle-looking low liars don’t think anything of cold snaps and can survive until winter, depending on your climate. They will survive frost or even severe frost, but their endurance is not infinite. If the cold lasts long enough they will lose their blooms, but even then the plant may come back.

Flowering cabbage

I hate cabbage; I pronounce his name like a curse word. However, flowering cabbage, which should never be eaten, but just looked at? I like it. The flowering cabbage laughs in the face of darkness and freezing rain. Grown in duos and trios, they can fill space well. Although they will always be primarily green, the centers come in a dazzling range of white, red and pink.