The Last of the Fiery Fall Color
As we turn the calendar page to December, unseasonably cold weather is upon us. Our highs were 20 degrees below our average for January. Night time temperatures dropped below freezing several times already. This put most of the garden into an early winter slumber.
Typically we are still gardening into December, planting trees and shrubs that get their roots established over the wet winter and cooler spring. The kitchen beds are usually filled with cold season veg and we often see native bees and butterflies on sunny days. Not so much this December as we are unseasonably cold with our standard wet.
There are a few resilient plants that loose their chlorophyll later in the season and are just now showing us their autumn color before they drop their foliage.
The leaves on our Fothergilla 'Mt. Airy' shrubs have lingered for an extended time. This native shrub puts on some big fall color with a multicolor display of yellows, oranges and reds with the presence of the carotenoids and xanthophylls as the chlorophyll breaks down.
On sunny days the blueberry shrubs appear to be on fire with intense oranges to deep reds. Blueberries are spectacular and not only provide delicious fruit during the summer months but deliver late season color to the garden. Try planting them in your landscape amongst your ornamentals. Highbush blueberries make a better landscape choice than the invasive Euonymus alatus (Burning Bush) or Nandina domestica (Nandina or Heavenly Bamboo), which is responsible for the deaths of flocks of Cedar Waxwing birds here in Georgia.
Dogwood cornus 'Celestial Shadow', a disease resistant hybrid, which carries green and yellow variegated leaves spring to summer now has deep red foliage that really stands out in the woodland garden.
The Franklinia alatamaha tree has adorned beautiful orange to red foliage, which has now transitioned to a deep purple with the appearance of the anthocyanins that are manufactured from the sugars trapped in the leaves.
We are relishing the last vibrant colors the garden is offering before the winter solstice is upon us and we inevitably spend less time in the garden and more time growing indoors.
