Fall Scaping

Extending your garden season into autumn

Reviewed by Lorraine Hunter

Whether you are creating a new garden site or preparing your plants for winter, fall—when the garden is in full glory—is a good time to take a close look at your landscape. And, Fall Scaping: Extending your garden season into autumn by Nancy J. Ondra and Stephanie Cohen is the book to help you do it.

Full of colourful, lush photography by Rob Cardillo, this book tells you how to bring late summer appeal to your yard with vines, shrubs, trees and flowers that still look good through the golden days of autumn. The authors give us the lowdown on deadheading, how best to integrate blooms, foliage and seed heads into the landscape and present a full range of hardworking fall perennial favourites such as chrysanthemum, Veronica, Joe-Pye weed, coneflower, sedum, aster and more.

There is lots of info on how to divide plants, plan a path, save and sow seeds as well as a comprehensive list of potential invasives. There is, of course, all kinds of of advice on fall maintenance including tidying beds and borders, dealing with debris, winterizing garden accessories, giving new life to tired turf and providing food for birds.

And, to finish off, Ondra and Cohen present 10 complete garden plans covering a range of growing conditions and colour themes with shopping lists for each. Fall Scaping, Storey Publishing.

Lorraine Hunter is a freelance writer, editor of Trellis magazine and a Toronto Master Gardener.

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