Are you among those people who love to soak up the outdoors during the chilly days of autumn? As the scenic fall foliage takes place this season, there are so many things you can do aside from appreciating nature’s beauty. If you have a wide lawn or even a small one that you want to nurture and make some changes to enhance your home’s curb appeal, now is the perfect time to roll up your sleeves and get to work on your fall landscaping so you can save time next spring when the growing gets busy. Trust me. You’ll be reaping what you sow for the next seasons to come.
You don’t have to be a professional to get the job done, although it would be a big help to have one. With a little tweak, dedication, patience, and appropriate knowledge about proper fall lawn care and landscaping, you’ll do just fine. With this comprehensive guide for fall landscaping, you can have a stunning lawn that works year-round.
10 Fall Landscape Ideas
We have gathered 10 fall landscaping ideas that you can work on your own to set up your yard into looking perfectly charming during one of the most beautiful seasons of the year. Check out which ones work best for you.
Natural Fall Foliage
If your house is surrounded by trees that have dazzling color-changing foliage, then you don’t even have to do much to feel the fall vibe. The transition of green leaves to a color of splendid gold, rich amber, and fiery red is breathtakingly beautiful. Let nature do the wonders as it unfolds before your eyes the beauty of another season. Having lovely foliage is already a main attraction in the neighborhood.
Pumpkins and Potted Plants
When it’s autumn, pumpkins surely go hand in hand with the season. What else would be perfect to add in your porch but pumpkins and potted plants? You can never go wrong with plastic pumpkins if you want to extend the display during the entire fall.
Add Harvest Festival Decors
Incorporate harvest festival-themed decorations in your front yard to exhibit that autumn atmosphere. Showcase your creativity by placing pumpkins, haystack, wheat used as a naturally textured wreath, gourds, cornstalks, etc. Won’t they be an adorable background for your photos? Those decors won’t go into waste come wintertime. Throw that hay and pumpkins in the compost pit for added fertilizer in the garden during spring.
Arrange Bright Fall Flowers
Arrange colorful mums, the perfect fall flowers, in a wheelbarrow, basket, or old caldron in front of your yard. You can go for one or two colors for a unified look or a variety of colors for a multicolored eye-pleasing display.
Add Delicate Flowers
Adding vivid blooms or vines in your fall landscape can stir the mood. You can transfer them into the pots if you please for easy re-arranging.
Plant Ahead or Buy Perennials in Bloom
With a little planning, you can achieve stunning perennials that go in full bloom during fall. You may plant them ahead of time, or simply buy at the nursery. Incorporate their lovely charm in your garden or walkway.
Autumn-Inspired Pathway
If you have much space, don’t leave the pathway bare. Add fall scenes for added appeal.
Add Ornamental Edibles
Have a contrast of the vivid color of ornamental cabbages among the orange mums and other flowers in your garden bed. Consider also other cool-season veggies to decorate your landscape since they make a good harvest even after the holidays. It’s like hitting two birds with one stone.
Keep It Cozy
Installing a fire pit or adding a fire bowl in your lawn adds warmth in the cool night. Gather your family around and stay cozy outdoors as you enjoy some time together destressing.
Set Up a Relaxing Spot
Save a spot to relax in your garden by placing a bench, chairs or an outdoor lounge. Be at peace with nature as you sat there, admiring the beauty of the passing season.
So, which ones do you like best to recreate in your fall landscaping scene?
10 Best Practices during Fall Landscaping
Apart from decorating your lawn to match the fall season, the heavy work is just about to get more serious. Get started for preparing your landscape six weeks before the snowfall. The increased moisture and cooler temperature during fall make perfect weather to prepare and grow new plants.
Evaluate the Situation and Take Action
Before you start with anything, take a walk around to assess your garden and landscape. Identify which plant requires more space and needs relocation. Check the health of each plant. Find bare soil where you can add new plants or make changes. Assess the irrigation system. Ensure it is ready for the coming wintertime. Installing drain rock strips around your building won’t just serve as a landscape enhancement but would also add efficiency in the irrigation system and protect structures.
Add Mulch Where Necessary
Mulching is recommended during fall to keep soil moisture, limit weed growth, and prevent soil erosion. Add mulch where there’s needed.
Examine Plants for Diseases
Better be cautious. Check each plant for any symptom of diseases such as “leaf spots, blights, wilts, scabs, cankers and soft rots of roots, storage organs and fruit, and overgrowth.” You can treat it using natural forms of control or spraying pesticides.
Plant Cool-Season Flowers
Flowers don’t bloom exclusively during spring and summer. There are also cool-weather flowers like Calendula, Osteospermum, Pansy, Dianthus, Petunia, Flowering Kale, Dusty Miller, Snapdragon, Sweet Alyssum, Geranium, and Cyclamen that can take the cold and beautifully adorn the garden beds during fall and even winter. You can add planting them in your fall landscaping to-do-list.
Fall is also ideal to plant shrubs such as Camellia sasanqua, Fothergilla, Oakleaf hydrangea, Rhododendron, Smoke bush, or Spirea in your garden.
Prepare the Lawn
Pull weeds during fall and you’ll have fewer next season. Rake debris and leaves to prevent damage to the grass. Doing so also helps in water quality. Consider composting the fallen leaves.
Aerate the Lawn
For lush, green grass, aerate the lawn during the fall season so the soil underneath can breathe. Use a garden fork for a small lawn or a walk-behind aerator for larger ones.
Trim the Grass
Prevent lawn disease problems like snow mold by keeping the grass at 2 to 2.5 inches tall.
Prune Plants or Trees
Trim cracked, loosed or dead limbs of ornamental trees and plants. Pruning is necessary to promote flower and fruit development, good health, prevent insects and infections, and keeps the desired shape of the tree or shrub.
Fertilize Turfgrasses
Use slow-release, all-natural fertilizer to feed turfgrasses, promoting dense, plush green grass come early spring.
Remove Annuals
Since annuals are seasonal and don’t grow back the next season, there’s no reason to leave them behind. Pull them out and save some seeds to plant next season.
10 Mistakes to Avoid during Fall Landscaping
Don’t fall for common landscaping mistakes that most people commit during fall. Steer away from these, and your lawn won’t suffer the dreadful consequences.
Letting Leaves Pile Up
Don’t get tired of raking fallen leaves during the fall season. Leaving them to pile up on your lawn all winter can cause more damage than what you thought to happen. Snow mold may develop underneath the pile of leaves, resulting in ugly dead areas of grass. Besides, fallen leaves may cover the walkways and sidewalks, which may cause possible accidents for pedestrians.
Forgetting to Plant Spring Bulbs
Some people neglect the fact that fall is the best time to plant spring bulbs like snowdrops or crocuses that bloom and adorn the landscape colorfully in time for the next year. The soil is perfect to nurture the bulbs since it’s still soft before the temperature drops frozen. Follow the label’s instructions regarding the planting depth. As a rule of thumb, big bulbs should be planted 8″ deep and 5″ deep for the small bulbs. You can plant them almost anywhere in the garden, but avoid areas where water settles, such as the foot of the hill. Just like what the Dutch say, “bulbs don’t like wet feet.”
Fertilizing Plants and Trees
Though it’s necessary to fertilize turfgrasses during fall, it doesn’t work the same for the plants and trees. It would be a waste to feed them, especially because they are on the brink of dormancy. Fertilizing them would promote new softwood growth that would be exposed to the risk of freezing weather, resulting in possible damage or even death.
Untimely Pruning
As a general rule, pruning during fall is a necessary practice. However,
you have to prune yews and boxwood before August ends. Pruning them later will result in winter injury for new growth. Shrubs that flower during spring, such as forsythia, azaleas, and lilacs need pruning right after they stop blossoming. Pruning them later will impede their flowering come springtime.
Neglecting to Keep the Lawn Safe
No matter how busy you could be during fall, take the time to rake the fallen leaves on your shared walkway. Trim dead branches to ensure they won’t get in the way of the power lines during fall, winter rain or storm. It’s not just for your family’s sake but as well as your neighbors’. Do your share in keeping the neighborhood safe from any possible accident.
Cleaning up Entire Garden
It may be tempting to clean up the slate before winter, but better hold it off until spring. Let your garden be a nesting ground for insects from bees, butterflies, ladybugs, other critters, and birds for their long winter nap. Doing so supports wildlife.
Failure to Protect Young Trees
For young and newly-planted maple, linden, and ash, it is crucial to put a tree wrap around them, from top to bottom, to protect them from infestation and winter damage. Do this before November ends.
Untimely Dividing/Transplanting Grasses
Avoid moving or dividing warm-season grasses, such as miscanthus, pennisetum, and panicum during fall. They need the warmth of the soil during spring to establish root growth.
Inconsistent Weed Pulling
If you’re thinking that it’s alright to rest easy because you’re already satisfied with your work on weed pulling after some snowflakes hit the ground, then I’m sorry to say this, you just have to keep moving. Don’t get too complacent. The weeds are tougher than you think. Pull out those weeds now, and you’ll have fewer to deal with during spring.
Storing Dirty Tools and Lawn Mower
Don’t forget to clean up the tools and empty the oil, replace the air filler, remove the blade to sharpen, and clean the undercarriage of your lawn mower that you used before storing them away in the shed for the winter. Ensuring they function well, are spotless, and stored properly saves you from having trouble when you need them again in spring. Don’t let the soil, moisture, and debris pile up and damage their efficiency.
Tips for Successful Fall Landscaping
We know you’re eager to make your lawn a fall oasis that’s why you’re still here continuously reading our guide. Well, here are additional tips to make your fall landscaping a success. Have fun doing this fun project with your family.
Paint Your Home
Autumn isn’t just the best season to prepare your garden, but also the good time of the year to refresh your home’s exterior paint. Since exterior painting is dependent on the mercy of the elements, painting on early fall can mitigate the temperature extremes. Apply a fresh coat of paint to relive the glory of your house. Wouldn’t it be a shame if you have a beautiful landscape paired with a home that’s crying for a painting renewal? You may ask for professional painters to do the job seamlessly for you.
Don’t Forget About Hardscaping
This guide is about fall landscaping but adding hardscaping for aesthetic enhancement will be a big hit. From walkways, pavers, foundations, fences, fire pits to outdoor lighting, you can add man-made features to your lawn to complement with your softscape. If you need complicated hardscapes, getting professional help can turn your outdoor dream project into reality without the fuss on your part.
Plant for All Season
Why spend a lot in your landscape when you can include plants that blossom all-year-round? Planting these lovely flowering plants will make your garden look stunning no matter the season: daylily, coneflower, zinnia, nasturtium, black-eyed Susan, bee balm, rose, guara, etc. Check which ones are available in your area.
Raked Leaves as Compost
Don’t let those fallen leaves be a waste. They can be a perfect addition to your compost pile. Since leaves have a high source of carbon material, they can be a natural mulch for your vegetable garden, flower beds, and around trees and shrubs.
Turn Irrigation System Off
When the temperature dips below zero, that is the perfect time to turn the irrigation system off and remove all the water, so the sprinkler system and components won’t be at risk of getting frozen and broken during winter. Don’t shut it off too early. Otherwise, your plants may not have an adequate supply of water. As a rule of thumb, your lawn needs half an inch of water during fall. As the grass turns dormant on the later days of fall, your lawn doesn’t need to be watered anyway.
Conclusion:
Taking the look and feel of your lawn into the next level doesn’t always mean breaking the bank. There are plenty of ways to doll up your lawn without the need to empty your pocket. You just have to be resourceful and prepared to sweat it out. All your hard work will pay off when you see the result after you follow our fall landscaping ideas and tips. Let us know how it went! We would be delighted to hear from you.