Creating a Fall Garden in Southern California
If you’re one of those Southern California gardeners who misses the change of seasons found in other areas of the country, reconsider your evergreen landscape and plant a fall garden that announces the coming of cooler months.
When the landscape is all evergreen and unchanging, Orange County gardeners can get bored, said Ron Vanderhoff, manager of Flowerdale Nurseries in Santa Ana and Costa Mesa. “By interspersing your yard with plants that strike a note of fall and winter, you create a dynamic, changing landscape with different tones, textures, and shapes that invites you to go out and explore it,” he said.
Many deciduous trees, such as the liquidambar, produce a fall color display in our mild climate. When allowed to go to seed, other plants display interesting seed heads and pods, sometimes more beautiful than their original flowers.
The Mickey Mouse plant (Ochna serrulata) has unremarkable early summer flowers. But when the flowers fall off and the sepals turn vivid red, they fill with seed-like fruit that eventually becomes a glossy jet black. That’s when the plant catches a lot of attention.
Festive Fall Plants for Your Garden
Many plants have a festive berry display in the fall and winter, such as:
- Pyracantha or firethorn, which offers a wide variety of berry colors.
- California pepper tree, covered in sprays of rosy-red pepper berries that hang on through winter and attract birds.
Many gardeners also appreciate trees with attractive bark or whose branches, when bare, resemble stunning aerial sculptures. For example, the crape myrtle (Lagerstroemia indica) has smooth, textured bark that gets striking blotches of brown, rust, and orange, especially after rain and a little sunshine.
Although many Southlanders avoid deciduous plants, these are usually the ones that provide a true sense of seasonal change. “Deciduous plants aren’t as labor-intensive as they might seem,” said Vanderhoff. “In many ways, they’re easier than evergreens, because they only lose their leaves once a year, whereas evergreens can lose leaves all year long.”
Consider pairing a ginkgo tree with a ficus, as it produces a profusion of golden yellow leaves that linger until they drop all at once. Or, plant a Chinese flame tree (Koelreuteria bipinnata) next to your juniper. This tree has leaves that briefly turn yellow before dropping, and its showy, two-inch seed capsules hang in clusters of orange, red, and salmon.
Most seed heads and pods last through autumn and some into winter, although they will succumb to rough weather, especially Santa Ana winds and hard rain. Although leaves tend to change color and drop by the end of autumn, many berries hang on to plants throughout our mild winters. Textural bark often looks even better in rainy, cool weather.
Minimal Maintenance for Your Fall Garden
The best benefit of this type of fall garden is that very little maintenance is required. If you’ve taken good care of the plants in spring and summer, they should produce ample seed and fruit in the fall, according to Laguna Beach landscape architect Ann Christoph.
If you do light pruning in the garden, be careful not to remove any seed heads you wish to keep, as they won’t grow back. Also, avoid knocking off seed pods and capsules.
For a real fall garden show, put away your pruning shears and just watch, Vanderhoff suggested. “Let the plants grow in their natural manner, rather than doing a lot of formal clipping and tidying, and you’ll probably see something different.”
Adjust your watering schedule. Water requirements drop considerably in the fall and winter, so don’t over-water.
Designing Your Fall Garden
No matter what your garden design, there is something with fall interest that will fit into your landscape, says landscape designer Jeff Garton, co-owner of Paradise Designs Inc. in Dana Point.
When planning a landscape with plants that have seed heads or pods or interesting stem structures, consider the following:
- Place plants with seed heads or unusual structures against a clean background like a bare wall.
- Consider lighting, both day and night. Ornamental grasses and leafy or lacy trees look best with backlighting that highlights them as they move in the wind.
- Plants with sculptural branching look best with front lighting to create interesting shadows on a plain background.
- Ornamental bark is best viewed up close, so plant at eye level and near windows for full effect.
You can also highlight these plants by placing them among evergreens. Garton also cautioned that plants you let go to seed may reseed in other areas of your yard, and some of these plants have pollen, which may be a problem for allergy sufferers.
When it comes to a more natural garden, a gardener must have tolerance for leaf drop and seed scattering. “But it’s all a part of winter and fall,” Vanderhoff said. “Why not go out and rake up the leaves and enjoy the change of seasons your yard has to offer?”
