Native shrubs for fall color
Vermont is a place with a second spring, a time of year when leaves are flowers, to paraphrase the novelist Camus. (Heaven knows we need a second spring, since the first one is widely known as 鈥渕ud season.鈥�)
But leaf peepers coming by the busload to see our maples, aspens, beeches, birches, and other trees shouldn鈥檛 blind us to another source of fall color: deciduous shrubs.
The ubiquitous burning bush, Euonymus alatus is the color champ in the shrub division. Ubiquitous because it鈥檚 widely sold and so easy to grow, burning bush has become an from the Atlantic coast as far west as Iowa, Missouri and Texas. Its glowing red is seductive, but gird your loins and just say 鈥渘o.鈥�
Instead of burning bush or Japanese barberry, another botanical bully with alluring fall color, why not consider growing one or two of our native shrubs, plants that know their place in the ecological order of things?
Useful lists of native species are available on online, and there are several on the subject, including the brand new , the latest Brooklyn Botanic Garden Handbook that deals with native species.
More good news? Many of our natives are as gorgeous as the green immigrants we usually plant, and there are enough home-bred candidates that it鈥檚 hard to know where to start or to stop.
My baker鈥檚 half dozen would include
- , Viburnum trilobum. Cherry-red berries and reddish-purple fall foliage. 鈥榃entworth鈥� has good fruit and fall color; avoid 鈥楥ompactum.'
- , Vaccinium corymbosum. Edible blue fruits and red or purple-red leaves in fall. There are many cultivars 鈥� 鈥楤luecrop鈥檃nd 鈥楯ersey鈥� are good choices. (Plant two or more cultivars to ensure pollination.)
- , Hydrangea quercifolia. Large leaves that turn red, orange, and yellow in autumn. 鈥楢lice鈥� is an improved cultivar developed by
- , Aronia arbutifolia. Bright red fruits and purple-red leaves in fall. 鈥楤rilliantissima鈥� is an improved cultivar.
- , or redoiser, Cornus sericea. Dark red stems and leaves in fall. 鈥楥ardinal鈥� has especially vivid stems.
, Rhus typhina. Or聽 the smaller but similar smooth sumac, .聽 Both species have multicolored leaves 鈥� red, yellow, orange 鈥� in fall and upright, red fruit clusters.
- , Itea virginica. Red-orange fall foliage. 鈥楬enry's Garnet鈥� is widely available.
Some of these autumn dazzlers 鈥� highbush cranberry in parts of the Midwest, for example 鈥� are now threatened. Adding them to our gardens helps to ensure they will be around forever. Which is as it should be.
Karan Davis Cutler, a former magazine editor and newspaper columnist, is the author of scores of garden articles and more than a dozen books, including 鈥淏urpee - The Complete Flower Gardener鈥� and 鈥淗erb Gardening for Dummies.鈥� She now struggles to garden in the unyieldingly dense clay of Addison County, Vt., on the shore of Lake Champlain, where she is working on a book about gardening to attract birds and other wildlife. She will be blogging regularly for Diggin鈥� It.
Editor鈥檚 note: To read more posts by Karan, see our . The Monitor鈥檚 main gardening page offers articles on many gardening topics. See also our . You may want to visit . Take part in and get answers to your gardening questions. If you join the group (it鈥檚 free), you can upload your garden photos and enter our next contest.
