Calibrachoa is integral to autumn design because it offers a wide palette of available colors, loves the cooler weather, and has a habit of trailing and spilling while looking bushy and full of bloom at the same time. This is a tough trick to pull off for most plants, but not for Calibrachoa; it is the go-to choice for filling a space up and over with color.

Chrysanthemums dominate the autumn landscape but they certainly don’t define the season for us. Designers of all stripes look for variety, whether they are landscapers with commercial contracts, retailers offering an attractive autumn bench, or homeowners who decorate for the harvest holidays. With that in mind, let’s walk past our vast array of mums and take a look at some of the alternative material we offer to provide fall color and flair.

This variety has been on our “want to grow” list for several years, so we planted some as a trial crop. You may know it as Globe Amaranth, but ‘Fireworks’ looks different. Rather than the typical short plant with little gumdrop flowers on the ends of the stems, its blooms are larger, more open and tipped with yellow, hence the name: ‘Fireworks’. Stems are tall, stiff and abundant while flowers keep their color after cutting and drying, making it perfect for the cutting or craft garden.

Ample blooms resemble magenta clover blossoms, and a mature plant will send up lots of stems. The plant blooms well into the fall, keeping pace with other autumn standards like ornamental cabbages.

Informally, our Autumn Program starts when we ship our earliest mums but the reality is that autumn is about more than just mums. The last couple of weeks in August amount to a flurry of before-school gardening and end-of-summer landscaping that gets the commercial account cleaned up for the fall holidays.

Important crops for the early days of autumn are not the same as those for October and November. In late August and September, we need crops that lead into the mild Indian summer weather.