Fall Display Ideas in Dark Purple

If you have Cochicum blooming in your garden right now, why not discover how long these flowers can last in water? Hint – longer than a week.

My whirl wind speaking tour is almost over, as I drive 6 hours to upstate New York to speak tomorrow at a meeting of the Adirondak chapter of the American Rock Garden Society (NARGS) at Cornel University where I will be presenting a talk about winter blooming bulbs. After an amazing and inspiring few days in Atlanta as the Garden Bloggers Conference last week, I am both energized and exhausted. I made many new friends as well as meeting dozens of other garden bloggers who I only knew as thumbnail images and hashtag handles. Isn’t ‘real’ better than digital sometimes?

Callicarpa provides a yummy( yet not edible!) option for all color displays. Look for shrubs in the spring at garden centers, and prune them careful so you don’t end up with plants that look chopped up like this…treat them more like forsythia – a biannual trim, which will allow long, graceful branches to form, like wands covered with berries….

…so it will look like this.  Callicarpa dichotoma and other Callicarpa species can be hard to find, but find at many of the on-line nurseries with a simple Google search. Your neighbors will be jealous when they see this color in your garden.

Since I am packing for my last trip, here is some images from my inspiration boards for my yet-to-be-designed fall displays that I am planning for my home and garden. Yes, sage and puple is my color theme this year. Eggplant, verdigris, malachite, purple, plum – you get the idea. I nice rest for the eyes from all of that orange, right?

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Violet, purple and sage green provide a fresh, new color palette for autumnal displays, thanks to this display at Terrain that I adored last year, I am searching garden centers for anything purple – eggplants, pottery and green winter squash.

Last year I tested this grey and black display idea inspired by galvanized metal. There is still a lot of purple going on here.

New England Asters, are often overlooked by many new gardeners, as most plant their perennial borders in the spring, when pots of asters are green and boring. On a chilly September evening, these tall and brilliant plants are anything but boring. Can you count the honeybees?

My good friends at the posh, earthy and stylish nursery Snug Harbor Farm in Kennebunk Maine is changing how America thinks about plants and display ( check out their site). They offer us a completely new and surprisingly simple option for red cabbage, right?

My front garden was once all lawn, but now sparkles in the crisp, fall air early in the morning. Calluna, heather and sedum in shades of sage and magenta distracts passerby’s from our neighbors orange pumpkins. Galvanized metal, slate, black iron combine with silver and black leaved plants – my chosen motif for our decks this summer. The miniature pineapple lily in the slate cube are new dwarf varieties I am testing.

Pots of quick color like these Pineapple Lilies and purple Hebe at Terrain can change ones mind about what a fall container, potted plant or arrangement should look like. Buh bye flowering kale, see ya later.

Salvia guaranitica and Ruby Throated Humming bird ( Archilochus colubris), getting ready to migrate south.

Purple-leaved grapes are showing up at better garden centers, imported from Holland a few years ago, these have been on my wish list for three years now. Great for the wine connoisseur’s display if planted in a violet, glazed pot and white pumpkins. Gourds and scarecrows beware.

Black Sunflowers are both awesome and creepy, but come on – don’t you have to have this in your garden nest year? Chocolate and smokey, imagine this with airy grasses and hip contrasting colors like mustard or gold.

I am on the hunt this year for pots of purple cotton and purple okra plants like this on the right, as well as reclaimed wooded crates in which to display them. Late agapanthus and Eucomis make me want to take a vacation from potted mums.

Begonia ‘ Escargot’ and Purple Cabbage make for a perfect couple along with succulents and a black Aeonium.