Fun Fall Plants for Your SoCal Autumn Garden

Written by Kelsey W.

Fall is a beautiful time of the year to watch the seasons change as the leaves start to turn from green to hues of bright orange, yellow, and red. The temperatures start to dip and everyone starts wearing sweaters and hoodies.

Wait a minute, we’re in Southern California. Do we get to see all that fall splendor with the brightly colored leaves, the leaf raking, and the daily pumpkin spice lattes?

Well, we might have enough pumpkin spice products around to last us a decade, but we do need to get a little creative when it comes to making our homes look like autumn has arrived.

The first day of fall is September 22nd. Let’s celebrate it this year with these awesome plants that will have you thinking about the crisp cool weather of a fall morning in Vermont and forgetting about the lingering heat waves that always seem to arrive just when fall makes an appearance in Southern California.

Autumn-Loving Flowers that Will Bloom Through the Fall

One of the benefits of living in Southern California is the year-round sunshine and the lack of a true winter where all the leaves go away, and everything is barren for a season. Yes, we have the mountainous areas in San Bernardino, but even those places are filled with evergreen trees that keep things green when the snow isn’t around.

If you’re keen on having a beautiful bed of flowers all throughout the fall (and maybe even into the winter if your plants are feisty enough), one of the best plants you can choose is cosmos. This plant is an annual, but you wouldn’t know it from how long it lasts – you can definitely coax it into living a few years in SoCal.

The blooms of the cosmos plant sort of look like a daisy, and it blooms all summer and well into the fall. It’s a great alternative to the classic chrysanthemum, which, if you’ve ever tried to nurture one for more than a year, you know that they’re quite a testy plant when it comes to living through the winter, even in Southern California.

Another plant you might want to try for a fall flower fest is sweet alyssum, which is not native to Southern California but is used to the cool temperatures of a European spring. As such, it will produce flowers virtually all year, especially if SoCal experiences a warm winter.

Just be aware that alyssum is a visitor to Southern California and shouldn’t be planted anywhere you can’t control it. Keep it in a container or in an edged flower bed where it won’t spread into the native environment. Native plants are always best, but just take care when you introduce a non-native plant to your gardening project.

Get Your Yard Maintenance Done in the Fall

Some of the summer temperatures make it really difficult to spend a whole day outside getting things organized and cleaned up outside, which is why a dip in the temperatures and the arrival of fall marks the ideal time to get some things done around your house that need doing.

If you have a lawn and grass in your yard, you’ll want to investigate what sort of fertilizer your particular type of grass needs since lawns do benefit from fertilizer in the fall. Your garden center pros will know the exact sort of feeding your lawn needs in the fall.

The fall is also a great time to get to pulling all the weeds that have started growing around your flower beds. Too often, we get to August and the hotter temperatures just make it really unfun to bend over the flower bed, yanking out weeds. However, your plants want their space, and the fall is a great time to get ahead of those weeds.

Another task that’s an excellent use of time in your garden in the fall is aerating and refreshing the soil for your plants. Over time, the soil can become hard and compacted, and it can become tough for the plants to grow new roots and get their nutrients and water.

You can aerate a lawn with an aeration tool (it’s basically a big stick you shove in the ground), but you can also take a spoon or other small implements and dig around the plants in your containers and flower beds to aerate the soil. It’s usually easiest to aerate the soil when it’s soft, so water the area before you start.

Autumn is the Time to Get Your Spring Garden Started

The late summer is a great time to plant seeds that will grow into beautiful plants the next spring, but don’t worry if you reach the fall and you still haven’t gotten around to putting those seeds in the ground. You still have time!

Head to your local Southern California garden center in September to start choosing your plants. One of the best fall seeds to plant is actually a bulb and is for the lily. You can put your lily bulbs in the ground all the way into October, and they’ll grow into a beautiful bush of flowers in the spring.

Irises are another bulb option for planting in the fall, but they do need a little more care once they arrive in the spring. You’ll want your lilies and irises planted in a sunny spot in your yard. You can even plant your bulbs in a balcony container if you reside in a condo or apartment and don’t have a traditional yard.

Remember to aerate (fluff up) the soil whenever you plant your bulbs. Don’t pack them into hard, stiff ground. Make sure they have a soft and inviting place to live as they sleep during the autumn and winter before they arrive for their debut next spring.

If you’re not keen on having a bare stretch of land where your bulbs are sleeping, you have a few options. You can lay some mulch down in the area, or you can plant some ornamental grass. Fescue is an excellent option as it’s drought resistant, relatively short, and pairs well with taller bulbs like lilies.

Choose a Plant That Doesn’t Need a Lot of Light

You won’t see a lot of petunias and pansies thriving in the fall as the available sunlight starts to recede, and our days get shorter. One way to maximize the happiness and beauty of your home is to choose plants that don’t need a lot of sunlight.

This might mean choosing some indoor plants for your home that don’t require a lot of sunlight, like a ZZ plant or a snake plant. Not only are those plants quite content to sit in a dark corner (well, a dimly lit corner anyway) of your home, but they’re even easy to grow.

In fact, you can put your snake plants outside in Southern California, as long as your home isn’t in an area where it regularly freezes. If you’re worried about an occasional freeze – maybe you live up the hill in the San Gabriel Mountains – just put your snake plants in a pot and bring them inside after the fall is over and temperatures dip lower.

You can also introduce other low-light loving plants like spider plants, which are lovely when put in hanging baskets, as well as vining plants like pothos, which you can literally forget about all season, and they’ll probably do just fine, sitting in that planter on your counter.

If you want a project plant this fall that will work well with the reduced daylight, try a Christmas cactus. They actually require 13 hours of complete darkness every day to bloom, with 11 hours of diffused (not direct!) sunlight during the day.  Just make sure your Christmas cactus isn’t in a drafty area of your home.

Come By Green Thumb Nursery for Fall Flower Fun

The calendar says it’s time for fall, even if the temperatures still say summer is here. Let’s get started on your fall garden, whether that means setting up some winter vegetables, finding some fall blooms, or getting your landscaping ready for next spring. You’ll find everything you need for a beautiful home at your local Green Thumb Nursery in Southern California.

Do you like what you see?  Click here to get content like this every week!
CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP!