ART HEAD ALREADY PLACED ON PAGE: FALL FLAIR

Varieties of late-season perennials and ornamental grasses come into their own.
SCRIPPS HOWARD NEWS SERVICE
Over the past 15 years, Martin Stern has shaped the garden he tends with his favorite season in mind. The English country garden that grows next to his business, Squire House Gardens in Afton, Minn., is a tapestry of long- and late-blooming perennials and ornamental grasses that come into their own in autumn.
"By fall, the garden has become more blowzy and relaxed," he said, nothing that snakeroot and Korean angelica have sprouted where they please, the fall-flowering Clematis heracleifolia is in full bloom and that when he stands in his late-season garden, Stern is dwarfed by statuesque Joe-Pye weed and the delicately airy purple moor grass. But magnificently mature plants and end-of-the season blossoms softly lit by a waning sun aren't all that define a fall garden.
"I choose plants for their good foliage and form rather than flowers," said Arla Carmichiel, head gardener at Three Rivers Park District Noerenberg Gardens in Orono, Minn. She has designed the public garden on Lake Minnetonka to be a showstopper even from mid-August to mid-October. That's when Noerenberg is flush with contrasting textural foliage and rich autumnal hues, such as the foxtail plumes of burgundy fountain grass, the yellow spikes of goldenrod and the lavender pompons and silver foliage of alliums.
"As the season progresses, it becomes more of a textural garden," Carmichiel said.
But you won't find mums, those old standbys, at Noerenberg or in Stern's garden.
"Some visitors come because they heard this is a fall garden and they always ask where the mums are," Carmichiel said. The all-too-expected fall flowers are "too dependable" for her and "too floristy" for Stern.
"There's many more choices for interesting form, texture and color," Carmichiel said.
Started as an experiment
Such as an ornamental vegetable garden made entirely of purple plants? Well, that's what Stern planted as an experiment this spring. Now the purple runner beans, basil, sage, eggplant and lacy-leaved kale take on mellow hues in the autumn sunlight. Other fall plant picks include dramatic ornamental grasses -- which can grow 5 to 8 feet tall, add a natural look and introduce movement and sound to the garden on those blustery fall days.
"They animate the garden by swaying in the breeze," said Erin Hynes, author of "Cold Climate Ornamental Grasses" and president of the Ornamental Grass Society. Hynes said some of the grasses such as 'Karl Forester,' a feather reed grass with wheat-like flowers, "harkens back to the beauty of the prairie."
Grasses, with their subtle color changes, and other autumn-loving plants keep the show intriguing until the inevitable frost. But for Stern, monkshood (Aconitum fischeri) with its early October upright spikes of lavender-blue flowers, is the garden's grand finale.
"I don't want my garden to peter out in resignation," he said. "I want it to end gloriously."
But not even the first snowfall has to mean curtains for the garden. If you leave plants with sturdy stems and showy seed heads, they'll liven up a drab winter landscape and provide food for wildlife.
"A dead plant can have a beautiful form and color against pure white snow," Carmichiel said. "I like to look out a window and see the pattern snow makes on a seed head. It gives you hope that, yes, there is life under that blanket of snow."