Enjoy this wonderful weather and those fall colors. it’s a beautiful transition time!
Fall is a wonderful time of year when we can finely cool down and have some fun outside. Roxborough is famous for their Halloween decorations and it’s one of the great parts of living in this neighborhood. Natural decorations of plants and pumpkins are a nice touch, too, since they last right up until Thanksgiving.
Our local Garden Centers are full of mums, pumpkins and gourds—usually at a cheap price. It’s a nice organic way to create some Halloween decorations that last into November (bonus: Mums can be planted in the ground late in November and many come back the following year).
Proportion and varying the heights of objects are key—similar to designing your summer containers with the “thriller, filler and spiller approach”. One way to start is with a couple pots of mums. It’s also fun to grab a chunk of inexpensive hay as part of the composition to give some height to the look. For your thrillers you can even use some corn stalks or branches you find on a walk in the park! The best arrangement is to group same objects together—so perhaps a couple mums at the top of a step and then some pumpkins and gourds trickling down. Don’t forget the window boxes! This is a great time to pull out a few of the summer stragglers and pop in some mini mums. If you deadhead them throughout the fall they will keep blooming through Thanksgiving.
And of course it’s important to do a fall tidy before decorating. Sweeping up some summer debris, cleaning off the porch, and once again dealing with those pesky sidewalk weeds! It’s always important to make sure you have a clean slate before decorating!
– Michelle Hinshaw
