After the Frost: Star Magnolia in the Walled Garden

Autumn Beauty: the Fern Fronds change color too

Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day November 2008 - More Blooms Than I Ever Expected

Well, I still thankfully have yet to experience my first frost of the season, so my zone 6b garden has more blooms than I would normally expect for this time of year. Given my prior bloom days posts for September featuring dahlias and October featuring roses, I'm going to focus on other blooms--annuals, perennials and one flowering tree--though both dahlias and roses are also continuing to bloom. Check out what is blooming in other bloggers' gardens over at May Dreams Gardens.
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One of my favorite clematis, 'Venusa Violacea' in the Cutting Garden.

Nicotiana in the entrance to the Bird Garden.

Autumn Cherry in the Walled Garden (more pictures and information here).

Petunia in a container in the Bird Garden.

Brown Eyed Susans continue to bloom from August until the frost in the Front Border. As a cut flower, it lasts for over a week in a vase.

Japanese Anemone in the Front Border. The white was so bright it took me several attempts to get this picture.

Self seeding Cleome or Spider Flower are all over the garden. This one is in the Walled Garden.

Mexican Sunflower in the Children's Garden.

Verbena bonariensis in the raised vegetable beds in the Children's Garden.

Globe Thistle on Lilac Hill.

Mexican Bush Sage - Salvia leucantha outside the Children's Garden.

Chrysanthemum on the edge of the Rose Garden.

Nasturtium trailing from a container on the deck.

Petunia in a container on the deck.

Salvia elegans in a large pot on the deck.

Asclepias curassavica--annual Butterfly Weed--at the entrance to the Bird Garden.

Salvia farinacea outside the Bird Garden.

Geranium 'Roxanne' is everywhere in the garden. It's one of the most useful edging plants I know. This one is in the Long Border.

Salvia guaranitica grows in many places. It acts like a screen in the Egg Garden and elsewhere it's a wonderful hummingbird attractant. This one is in the Children's Garden.

Amaranthus 'Hopi Red Dye' self seeds itself in the Cutting Garden.

Zinnia in the Cutting Garden.

Silver Leaf Sunflowers is one of two sunflowers still blooming. The other is Italian White.

"Put the Pruners Down and Step Away": Autumn is not the Time to be Pruning your Roses and Hydrangeas

As a relatively new blogger, I'm still learning about all of the different blogging tools available. On Google Analytics, I've just figured out how to look at the keywords and web pages that visitors to my blog have been searching and reading.
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Much to my surprise, I've recently attracted a lot of traffic to my prior posts on pruning roses and hydrangeas. My advice? Wait until late winter/early spring. I do absolutely no pruning of hydrangeas at this time of year and the only pruning of roses that I do is either of completely dead wood or canes that have grown so tall that they are likely to break in the winter winds and damage the rest of the plant. For more information, click below:
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Hydrangeas: Why and How to Prune
How to Prune Roses, Part I: An Introduction
How to Prune Roses, Part II: Old Rose Pruning Secrets
How to Prune Roses, Part III: Why Prune?

Autumn Beauty: Grasses in my Mixed Borders

There was a time when I didn't think I liked grasses in the garden. Then, I visited the Cutler Botanical Garden in Binghamton, New York, and I was taken by the beautiful display grasses that they have there. Now, I have grasses in grasses in most of my mixed borders, and they are particularly lovely in autumn with their plumes, as you can see below. These pictures were taken about ten days ago and the grasses are now turning color from summer green to winter straw. I'll leave the grasses up for the next couple of months to provide some winter interest before cutting them down at the end of the winter/beginning of spring before the new growth begins.
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Lilac Hill
The Long Border.
The Long Border.

Goldberry Hill.
The Egg Garden.

Autumn Beauty: Chrysanthemums

In the Children's Garden.
In the Rose Garden.

In the Cutting Garden.

Autumn Beauty: Clematis Seed Heads

Autumn Beauty: The Yellow Leaves of the Hickory Tree

Fragrance in the Garden: The Katsura Tree in Autumn

Purchased five years ago at a benefit for the Reeves Reed Arboretum in Summit, New Jersey, this Katsura tree, Cercidiphyllum japonicum, has grown from two feet to about twenty feet tall. Because of its beautiful form (it will be great to climb in about fifty years) and leaves (now yellow), it is one of my favorite trees in the garden. In addition, its most unique feature is its caramel-like fragrance that you experience in the fall. It is planted in the backyard next to the fort and in front of the deer fence.
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Update: as requested, here is an additional picture which displays what the leaves of the Katsura tree look like during the spring and summer.

A Flowering Tree for Spring and Fall: Autumn Cherry Blossoms

Despite temperatures forecast to dip below freezing, another week has gone by and I have thankfully not yet experienced my first frost. The weather is supposed to be in the forties to sixties this week, so it will be a perfect autumn week in the garden.

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As I have previously written, I love flowering trees. I love them so much that I seek out varieties that blossom at various times of the year, not just the spring. For example, my new autumn cherry, prunus subhirtella autumnalis (pictured below), which I planted this spring in the Walled Garden, blossoms in both the spring and the fall. The autumn blooms, offset by the leaves which have already started to change from green to red, started showing themselves in October and are continuing into November.

Spider Flowers (Cleome) in the Morning Sun after the Rain

The frost came to some parts of Chatham, New Jersey earlier this week, but my garden has so far been spared. In these last days before the frost, I have been taking my time to appreciate and photograph the beauty of the flowers that remain.

For example, I recently posted about Spider Flowers (Cleome), but couldn't resist sharing these additional photographs that I took this morning. Along the pebble path of the Egg Garden, the morning sun glistened off of the raindrops captured in the delicate structure of the spider flowers.

Knowing that their days are numbered, I have also been liberally cutting my flowers so my home is now filled with arrangements, including roses, dahlias, sunflowers, salvias, and cleome.

Autumn Beauty: Japanese Beautyberry

As a supplement to last year's pictures of my Japanese Beautyberry (Callicarpa japonica) in summer and winter, here are two autumn pictures with the berries and leaves. In the winter, the shrub will be left with just the berries.

"They are healthy and vigorous plants. I purchased very small plants and they grew quickly in the first year...For fall and winter arrangements, you can cut the branches with the Beautyberries. If you do so when they still have leaves, I recommend that you remove the leaves because they droop immediately after being cut."

For an additional post on propagation, click here.