The Ultimate Fall Gardening Guide

Fall is the perfect time to enjoy the shift in seasons out in the garden and to plan ahead for your garden’s future success.

It’s a magical season full of changing colors, unique flowers, long shadows, and a sense of things slowing down. Fall is a time of year that should be celebrated for its fleeting beauty and embraced for its abundance and possibilities. We encourage gardeners to approach the potential of Fall and all the gardening tasks it holds with two mindsets:

1. Gardening for the present: What can be done right now to celebrate the abundance of Autumn and make the garden shine in the short term.

2. Gardening for the future: What should be done to ensure that the upcoming Winter, Spring, and Summer are filled with the sights, sounds, and even the soils, of a truly thriving garden.

We’ve created the Ultimate Fall Gardening Guide to help you balance the tasks of the moment with the jobs for the future, all while making and enjoying the garden of your dreams.

7 Gardening Tasks to Do This Fall for Instant Gratification

Here are the best things you can do in your garden, on your porch, and in your containers to embrace the unique colors, textures, and feeling of Fall. Complete these tasks in September and October to give your garden the quintessential Autumnal aesthetic and appearance.

1. Refresh Container Gardens

Spark seasonal interest and redo your container plantings to capture the look and feel of Autumn.

Remove tired Summer annuals from your outdoor pots and container plantings, and add in annuals, perennials, and grasses that capture the essence of Fall.

• Our favorite Fall container thrillers are grasses like Millet, Panicum, and Carex, perennials like Echinacea, Euphorbia, and Ferns, and annuals like Kale, Rudbeckia, and Asters. Or you can scale up and feature a stunning, color-changing tree or shrub in your Fall containers before planting them into the landscape in November!
• For Fall container fillers, plant perennials like Heather, Heuchera, and Carex grass or annuals like Ornamental Peppers, Ornamental Kale, or Pansies and Violas. Filler plants help solidify your color scheme and the look and feel of your Fall container planting.
• The best Fall container spiller plants (and groundcovers) are Wire Vine, Vinca, and Creeping Jenny. When choosing a spiller plant for Fall, keep it simple and use them to add a bit of drama and texture to container arrangements.

Find more inspiration and tips for Fall Container Planting in our Fall Container Garden Ideas blog.

2. Create a Welcoming Front Porch

Go wild with specialty heirloom pumpkins, Autumnal décor, and even hay bales to porchscape your patio for Fall.

The best way to capitalize on the spirit of the Autumn season is to create a show-stopping vignette on your front porch. You can deck out your deck using classic oranges and plenty of pops of red and yellow, go for a spooky aesthetic in honor of Halloween, or channel a more subdued and elevated mix of peaches, caramels, and blues. But no matter which look you prefer, the best way to achieve the perfect Fall porchscape is to mix living container plantings with unique, specialty pumpkins and add in a few pieces of décor to really anchor the look.

Our Porchscaping Ideas for Fall Curb Appeal blog shows off stunning ways that Portland-area designers choose to decorate their porches and patios for Fall.

3. Plant Flowering Fall Annuals

Bring classic color to borders or pots and plant Fall annuals like Mums, Asters, Ornamental Kale, Violas, and Pansies.

Add extra oomph to landscape beds along your pathways or near your entryways with flowering annuals that will help bring blooms and color to your garden up until the very end of Autumn. Annuals like Mums, Asters, and Ornamental Kale add a statement to entryway beds and are perfect for using in container plantings. Pansies and Violas can be planted en masse as bedding annuals to add long-lasting color with blooms that will repeat until Spring.

To see our full selection of colors, sizes, and options, visit our Vancouver, Cedar Hills, Lake Oswego, and Seaside Garden Centers in person!

4. Plant for Fall Leaf Color

Leaf peep from the comfort of home with new trees and shrubs that bring stunning Fall color to your landscape this year.

One of the very best features of deciduous trees and shrubs is the gorgeous display that they put on in Autumn. Green leaves shift in kaleidoscopes of gold, amber, orange, red, burgundy, and more. The best time to see plants at the peak of their Fall color is in October, which also happens to be the best time to plant trees and shrubs in the Pacific Northwest! By bringing a new tree or shrub into your garden now, you’ll get to experience their Autumn magic right away all while getting them off to the strongest start possible—it’s the ultimate win-win!

Amazing plants for Fall color are featured in our blogs Our Favorite Trees, Shrubs & Vines for Fall Color in the Landscape and 7 Underappreciated Trees & Shrubs for Fall Color.

5. Add Grasses to your Garden

Embrace movement and texture with Ornamental Grasses in containers or landscape beds.

Gardeners can easily set the tone for Autumn by incorporating a range of Ornamental Grasses into their landscapes and containers. Herbaceous grasses bring a sense of relaxation and rhythm to gardens, and their highly ornamental seedheads are lovely additions to containers or cut flower arrangements. Evergreen grasses, while shorter, offer gardeners the opportunity for steady texture that doesn’t change with the seasons, but the tawny tones of Carex are particularly well-suited to Fall containers.

The best herbaceous and evergreen for the Pacific Northwest are detailed in Our Favorite Ornamental Grasses. In our blog Tips for Designing with Ornamental Grasses, you’ll learn creative ways for how to incorporate these Fall essentials into multiple settings in your garden.

6. Plant Fall Vegetables & Grow More Herbs

Extend the harvest season with Fall and Winter vegetables and add flavor to seasonal soups and sauces with herbs.

Fall sees the slowdown and often the end of Summer veggie production, but fortunately September and October, and even November, are excellent times to plant a host of edible plants for Fall and Winter harvest. Greens can be grown from starts or seeds and picked throughout the Autumn into Winter, while root vegetables and brassicas can all be planted in Fall to harvest in early Spring.

But our favorite edible to grow in Fall and Winter has to be homegrown herbs. The aromatic, evergreen leaves of culinary Sage, Thyme, and Rosemary are always a welcome sight and smell when colder weather hits. Herbs add texture to Fall and Winter container plantings and can be grown right on your porch for easy, all-season access. But the main reason to grow them is to use your fresh, homegrown herbs for their unparalleled flavor as you roast meat or potatoes or make delicious soups and sauces from scratch. The best way to bring the outside in during the Autumn is to use fresh herbs and vegetables in home cooked meals.

Find more information and how-to’s for Fall Veggie growing on our blog Summer Harvest Tips & Fall to Winter Vegetable Gardening, or visit How to Grow & Harvest Herbs to learn more about herb gardening.

7. Give your Lawn a Boost

Reseed and renovate your existing turf or lay new sod to make sure your lawn looks full and lush even in the Winter.

If your lawn looks tired after the long hot Summer, Fall is a great time to give it a little extra love. Make sure dry, compacted soils will absorb Fall rains by aerating your turf. Any areas that look thin or threadbare should be overseeded in September and October while soils are still warm enough for seed to sprout and fill in before colder weather. Lawns can be fertilized at a half rate to encourage new growth without stressing the grass or the soil. But the ultimate way to make sure your lawn looks good going into Fall and Winter? Lay new sod! You won’t need to worry about watering it in, and the warm soils will offer a welcome home to new roots.

7 Gardening Tasks to Do This Fall for Future Success

Here are the projects that you should prioritize out in the garden to make sure your landscape, flower borders, and edible gardens are successful next year. Complete these tasks from September through November to maximize the potential of your soil and plants and improve their health and appearance next Spring, Summer, and Fall.

1. Divide & Plant Perennials

Add more long-lived color to beds and borders with new perennials from your own garden, a friend’s, or the garden center.

Fall is the perfect time to assess planting beds and borders for areas where the balance is wrong or the rhythm of the bed is off. There may be gaps in the beds or areas where one plant has become too dominant. In spots where a single plant has grown too large for its health or the look of the border, the perennial can be divided by lifting the entire thing and then chopping it into smaller pieces with a sharp shovel or hori hori knife and then replanting it throughout the bed, especially into sparse areas. If you have more plants than you know what to do with, create a new planting bed by removing some lawn, or give them away to a friend or neighbor!

Perennials planted in Autumn from either divisions or garden centers (be on the lookout for SALES!) get off to a particularly strong start, even if they are already going dormant. That’s because their roots can take advantage of the warm soil and plentiful rain to grow strong and get acclimated to your soil’s biology, allowing them to hit the ground running in Spring of next year.

Learn more in our blog Why Fall Is the Best Time for Planting.

2. Plant Large Trees & Shrubs

Invest in woody plants like trees and shrubs that will settle in, receive regular rain, and grow stronger for next year.

If you’ve been daydreaming about bringing a large shade tree into your garden or planting up a big new hedge, Fall is absolutely the best time to do that work! The selection of trees and shrubs at the garden center is still phenomenal, you’ll get to take advantage of their Fall color if they are deciduous, enjoy them over the Winter if they are evergreen, and get their roots settled and watered for free (thank you, rain!).

Trees and shrubs really set the tone for the whole look of the garden, so investing in a new set of larger plants can go a long way toward establishing a new look and feel in your garden. Interested in creating a Cottage garden? Grab your first round of Roses and Lilacs right now! Trying to create a more modern look? Go find the perfect Japanese Maple and a few unique Conifers for your garden. And for anyone interested in Traditional gardens, Fall is the perfect time to plant generous swaths of Hydrangeas and get Boxwood plants into the ground.

Learn more about different landscaping styles and the trees and shrubs that can help bring them to life in our inspiring collection of Landscape Design Guides!

3. Plant Fruit Trees & Berries

Gain a precious year of growth by putting edible plants in the ground now instead of waiting until next Spring.

Edible plants bring so much to the garden—the flowers are beautiful, the fruit has unmatched flavor, and they bring wildlife and personality to landscapes big and small. It’s true that the best selection of fruits and berries can be found in early Spring when new shipments arrive, but there are some great advantages to planting fruits in Fall.

First off, you’ll get a plant that is significantly larger than it would be next Spring as it has had an additional year to grow its roots, shoots, and leaves. Second, you’ll save money on that plant by getting something larger now, and potentially by getting it on sale, as fruit trees and berries are often discounted at the end of the Summer and Fall! Thirdly, woody fruit trees and berries of all types benefit from the same principles of Fall planting, where abundant rain and warm soils get plants off to a healthy, happy start!

Need more reasons to add fruit to your garden? Check out our blog on the 7 Benefits of Planting Fruit in Your Garden.

4. Plan & Plant for Winter Interest

The best to way to beat the cold weather blues is with fascinating plants that show off in Winter.

Because Fall is the perfect time for planting, you can and should use it as an opportunity to add plants that will bring you joy, especially when the weather outside is dismal. Trees and shrubs with exciting bark and pretty, fragrant Winter flowers are the ultimate way to beat cold weather blues.

Some of the best Winter-interest deciduous plants with showy bark include Red Twig Dogwood (or yellow or orange!), Stewartia, and Crape Myrtle. Phenomenal evergreen plants with Winter flowers include Winter Camellias like Yuletide and the fragrant Pink-A-Boo, along with Daphne odora, and perennial favorites, Hellebores. And for something that combines Fall color, Winter flowers, and fragrance, look no further than Witch Hazel. Plant any of these near entryways or where you can clearly view them from indoors, and you’ll find yourself looking forward to Winter in ways you never thought possible!

5. Layer in Fall Bulbs for Spring Flowers

We think one of the smartest things you can do in Fall is gift your future self an exciting display of bulbs come Spring.

Flowering bulbs are the first heralds of Springtime and they bring low-maintenance elegance to any landscape. If you’ve been longing for early Crocuses, fragrant Narcissus, or exotic Tulips, Fall is the time to plant them! By the time they emerge and bloom in Spring, it’s already too late to create a truly enviable show in the landscape, as they must be planted en masse in the Fall. Whether you sneak some Crocuses into the edge of your lawn, take the opportunity to layer Narcissus and Tulips into your perennial flower borders, or install a breathtaking new modern meadow full of Alliums and Ornamental Grasses, you are always making the right call when you add Fall Bulbs for Spring Flowers to your landscape.

6. Mulch the Soil With Fallen Leaves

The key to healthier, happier trees, shrubs, perennials and edibles? A generous Fall mulch of fallen leaves!

Mulch has a multitude of benefits including weed suppression, insulation, reducing water runoff, and improving the microbial diversity of soils. While it might seem obvious to mulch in the Spring (and we think you should do it then, too!), a good Fall mulch will help keep perennials and new plantings from experiencing extreme fluctuations in temperature during freezing weather, ensuring they can grow strongly when they wake up in the Spring. And our favorite Fall mulch? Leaves! Rather than raking and discarding leaves, leave them in garden beds as a mulch to help feed the soil and protect plants. You can even leave a light layer of fallen leaves on your lawn, where it will help protect the turf and feed the soil for next season. Plus, when you leave your own leaves in your landscape, you help insure that overwintering pollinators are safe and sound all Winter long.

Our blog The Whys & Hows of Mulch gives you everything you need to know about the best strategy and material to use when mulching your garden beds this Fall.

7. Prune for Growth, Structure & Appearance

Many trees and shrubs benefit from being pruned in the Fall to help reduce damage in Winter and create more visual appeal.

Fall is a great season for a wide range of garden tasks, and if you’re starting to feel overwhelmed, no need to worry! While Autumn is an excellent time to prune, it is by no means critical. The biggest thing to be aware of when it comes to Fall pruning is that this is the time make sure you take care of any potential structural issues before Winter. If you’ve noticed that one branch is hanging particularly low or looks too heavy, take it off now before it snaps during an ice storm. Remove tree branches that have grown dangerously close to gutters so they don’t get clogged with leaves.

And if you have the energy (or want one of our friendly landscaping teams to help), Fall is an excellent time to prune tall hedges like Laurel and low hedges like Boxwood to give them a nice tidy appearance as we head into Winter. After all, the structure evergreen hedges provides is going to get us through the quieter months, so it’s a great idea to have them looking sharp.

For detailed pruning tips and tricks, check out our blog Pruning 101: Tools, Techniques & Timing.

More Fall Gardening Resources

Every year we have seasonal sales at each of our Pacific Northwest Garden Centers. Stay up to date on our current offers, discounts, and special deals—subscribe to our email newsletter and follow us on social media!

Monthly Gardening Checklists: SEPTEMBER, OCTOBER, NOVEMBER

• Our Favorite Ornamental Grasses & How to Grow Them in Your Garden
• Our Favorite Trees, Shrubs & Vines for Fall Color in the Landscape
• Plant Fall Bulbs for Spring Flowers
• Porchscaping Ideas for Fall Curb Appeal
• Pruning 101: Tools, Techniques & Timing
• Summer Harvest Tips & Fall to Winter Vegetable Gardening
• Tips for Designing With Ornamental Grasses
• Why Fall Is the Best Time for Planting
• The Whys & Hows of Mulch