THE FALL GUY
The advantages of planting a garden in the fall are immense, even if the gratification is not immediate.
Plants grow slowly but surely at this time of the year and, by spring, with their roots deep in your soil, they are ready to explode with new growth.
Let me give you a firsthand example from my frontyard:
Back in 1994, we decided that our sunny yard was too valuable to waste on a bone-tired Bermuda grass lawn. Even though we made the decision in spring, we waited until fall to do the actual work, knowing from experience that it would be so much easier then.
In autumn, the sun would be getting lower and less intense, so there would be less stress on new plants. Temperatures would cool down, so we would need to water less often and, with any luck, winter’s rains would help. As it turned out, we barely had to water the garden--falland winter storms did all the work (and forecasters say this winter will also be wet).
Planting in spring would have been a different story--days would get hotter and hotter and the sun more intense, with watering becoming ever more critical and tiresome. We might have had to water every day at first and then run the risk of overwatering some plants, particularly those that are drought-resistant and sensitive to too much water.
Planting in fall meant we wouldn’t see too much growth right away, since so many plants are slowing down for winter, but we knew the roots would be growing out of their little rootballs and into the garden soil.
Come spring, when most plants do their above-ground growing, they would be established in their new home, rooted deeply and ready to grow, not needing constant watching and daily watering.
This is true for most plants--trees, shrubs, ground covers, perennials, herbs and especially California natives. We would be planting lots of these more permanent kinds of landscape plants, because the plan was to give lasting structure to the new garden with drought-resistant shrubs and perennials.
Some short-term annual plants must be put in during fall because they grow only in cooler winter weather, then flower or fruit in spring, dying by summer. Because we would be planting vegetables in raised beds, plus a few spring-blooming annuals and wildflowers, we would also be planting these seasonal plants, often called the “cool-season” annuals or vegetables.
A few plants on our plan would be planted at other times of the year because there are exceptions to the rule that all things do better planted in the fall in Southern California.
We would wait until spring to plant a Valencia orange because subtropicals such as citrus and bougainvillea grow better planted during the warming months, and they are not as susceptible to overwatering.
In winter we would plant blackberries and roses, because these are available bare root in January, when they are easier to plant, when there is more variety at nurseries and when prices are about half what they are at other times of the year.
If there is a disadvantage to fall planting it is that nurseries are not particularly well-stocked at this time of year. Many people can’t resist buying plants in spring and early summer, when so much is in bloom, so nurseries look their best at those times of the year.
I am not immune to the glitter and glamour of plants at nurseries in spring and summer, so what I do is buy them, then keep them on the patio in their containers until fall. Watering all these little potted plants huddled together on the patio is much easier than watering them when they are planted and spread throughout the garden. And, because they are potted in fast-draining nursery soil, they’re not likely to die over the summer from overwatering.
It’s perhaps an odd strategy, but it works, and we actually had most of our new plants on hand well before we started building the new garden.
Planning the Yard
What we wanted in the new garden was a sunny place to grow herbs and vegetables and a lot more flower and foliage color. The frontyard faces south and has fewer trees than the backyard, so it is much sunnier.
Our kids no longer used the lawn in front and were, in fact, heading off for college and careers that fall, so there would be no one around to complain when the lawn disappeared. (Children are probably the best reason to have a lawn.)
My wife and I designed the new garden as a place to putter, full of interesting plants and flowers that required care but not constant, monotonous upkeep--fun stuff. It has been exactly that, and although it may not be as exciting as having a new baby in the house, when I’m out front working on a quiet Sunday morning, it is pure joy.
It has also fed us elegantly, with everything from fresh fraises des bois and blackberries to beans and tomatoes sprinkled with African basil, and we’ve managed to have fresh salad every night for the last three years. Not bad from a frontyard.
I drew up plans while testing some garden-design computer programs for homeowners, which I wrote about in an April 16, 1995, story. The plans showed where the paths would be, the raised beds, the new picket fence and where some of the plants would go. They even helped estimate materials.
We were especially interested in the shadows that would be cast by trees as they grew. One program had a feature that showed where shadows would fall though the years. That helped us position the vegetable beds and herbs in the sunniest spots and also warned us that a couple of places were pretty shady, despite appearances.
The Work Begins
In early September 1994, we killed off the Bermuda and kikuyu lawn grasses with Roundup. Although its environmental track record is not as clean as we thought at the time, this is still the best way to get rid of these deep-rooted, persistent grasses.
This systemic herbicide works best in hot weather when the grasses are actively growing, and a single spraying--precisely following label directions--killed the grasses, roots and all.
There was also a big, invasive tree in the frontyard, and we hired a crew to take it out and grind out the stump and some of the bigger roots. They also scooped up the now-brown sod and carted it off.
This was our biggest expense, but it left us with a clean slate and a frontyard that was a little lower in elevation, so we had room to add soil amendments.
I ordered a truckload (13 “skip” loads) of mushroom compost to add to the soil. When the dump truck emptied its load, I had a few anxious moments wondering if I had ordered too much because the piles were immense. But my calculations said that this was how much I needed to cover the 20-by-50-foot frontyard, and I had double-checked my figures with the company that supplied the amendment.
Note that I ordered an organic amendment, not top soil, because I wanted to improve my soil, not make it higher or replace it, which is what top soil should be used for.
With a shovel, rake and wheelbarrow, I spread a 3-to-4-inch-thick layer over the garden. I also broadcast a granular fertilizer and some gypsum to improve fertility and drainage.
Then I tilled it all in, trying to use my tiny power tiller. Halfway through, a sympathetic neighbor offered me the loan of his larger tiller, which is what I should have rented in the first place. I tilled all the amendments into the top foot or so of soil.
I put in two new spigots because we were planning on watering the garden with hoses and portable sprinklers. The design was a little complicated for such a small space and too full of plants to work well with a sprinkler system or even drip.
We used the same stepping stones we had used in back to build a new path, which would also effectively widen the narrow 1940s driveway. The pavers measure 2 feet by 2 feet and are plain concrete so we thought they would be economical and wouldn’t draw attention from the plants. As it turned out, they were no longer made, and we had to order a batch, so they weren’t that economical.
Here and there we added a few cobblestones and paving bricks that I had found in the gutters of old downtown L.A., plus blocks from an old adobe patio that had been razed, just to add a touch of history to our painfully new garden.
Next came the picket fence, which I jokingly told my neighbors was to keep the kids from moving back in. Actually, the boards had friendly, blunt tops, not sharp pickets, and it was built to keep dogs out of the garden and give it some sense of enclosure. It also turned out to be a handy height to grow blackberries on--3 feet tall, the legal height in the frontyard.
I later found it the perfect place to set a coffee cup, or to lean tools against. In a pinch, you can even perch on it when talking with neighbors out walking the dog.
The “pickets” were made by sawing ordinary 6-inch-wood fence boards in half, at the lumber yard.
We added an entry gate, a rusted antique made in the late 1800s by Stewart Iron Works of Cincinnati, and a small arbor covered with a fragrant variegated winter jasmine. Right next to it I planted a powerful white heliotrope that I picked up at a Huntington Botanical Gardens plant sale, so a visitor could sniff his way to our house.
Planting Time
Inside the fence I built the raised vegetable beds on one side and left room on the other for caged tomatoes and things that sprawl, like cucumbers. I added homemade compost to these beds, which further fluffed up the soil, and we planted fall crops almost immediately, things like lettuce, carrots, beets, peas and cole crops. Around the beds I put in all the herbs my wife had been wishing for and then some.
We did not build the fence right up against the sidewalk or the property line, because I wanted garden beds on both sides.
On the outside we planted all sorts of fascinating new drought-tolerant things, including natives such as the Matilija poppy, native iris and Rancho Santa Ana’s hybrid coral bells, even Berkeley sedge for some grassy clumps.
We tried out some natives that were new to us, such as Chrysopsis villosa, and planted several kinds of fall-blooming California fuchsias for the hummingbirds.
We planted other new things, like the gray-leaved plectranthus, and Salvia chiapensis in the shade of the magnolia street tree.
The salvia has turned out to be one of my all-time favorite plants because it never stops blooming and can be easily pruned whenever it gets too large.
We planted more than 160 kinds of plants, not counting the annuals and vegetables, during the months of October and November, giving a real crazy-quilt, cottage-garden look to the front of our decidedly cottage-sized house.
Many of these are naturally small plants, even tiny enough to grow between the stepping stones. For instance, autumn crocus bloom between the pavers.
In this frontyard garden we wanted to keep things small and low. Only a few things, such as an upright rosemary and a European bay pruned as a shrub, make tall foils for the rest.
We planted a tremendous variety, which should keep us fascinated for quite a few years. Each morning is a little adventure, going out to see what has bloomed or borne.
If the cost looks a little low for this many plants, it is because we raised many of them ourselves, from seeds or cuttings. Those we bought were mostly of the 4-inch-pot size because these grow quickly planted in the fall and because, being small, they’re also easier to plant.
The one casualty was the orange tree planted from a 15-gallon can in spring, which we didn’t water enough in summer. As it turned out, there really wasn’t room for this tree anyway, but it was an expensive loss.
Not one of the other plants--no matter how exotic--died or even stumbled. All grew slowly through winter, without our having to water them much at all, and they exploded with growth in spring. By the first summer, we had a garden that looked as if it had been there more than a few months.
Actually, we had a presentable garden that spring, because between some of the slower growing shrubs, we had sowed seeds of wildflowers--native clarkias and baby-blue-eyes, and red European poppies. They came up with the first rain and bloomed in spring. We pulled them out in summer, giving the shrubs room to grow, but they made a spectacular temporary filler.
We have already replaced some of the plants because either they didn’t live up to expectations or they grew too big (a perennial problem in a small garden), but our experience again showed us that timing can be everything in gardening and that there is no time like the fall for planting.
Now if I can just get the guys to stop throwing the newspaper in the new flower garden.
(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)
The Costs
Remove tree and lawn: $800
Soil amendment, delivered: $176
Lumber for fence and arbor: $365
Stepping stones: $309
Sand and gravel: $24
Shredded bark for paths: $45
Pipe: $41
Redwood for bench and raised beds: $121
Plants: $290
Total: $2,171
