5 Expert Tips for End-of-Summer Landscaping

As summer winds down, it’s time to prepare for next spring, beautify your landscape for fall, and ensure your landscape plants stay healthy throughout the winter.

In this blog post, you’ll learn five landscaping tips for late summer as we transition to fall:

Dividing perennials
Retaining moisture and protecting plant roots with mulch
Practicing smart watering in the fall
Planting spring bulbs in late fall
Embracing native plants for eco-friendly landscaping.

Dividing Perennials for Healthy, Long-Lasting Plants

Perennial plants provide lasting beauty to your landscape and flowerbeds. They also can be divided to grow new plants, filling up landscape spaces. Perennials such as anemones, amsonia, daylilies, hosta, lilyturf, and ornamental grasses should be divided to continue healthy growth and roots.

Here are three reasons to divide perennials in the Fall from our experts:

The weather is cooler, protecting plants from shock when transplanted.
Plants send energy to their root systems to prepare for winter dormancy.
Perennials are rejuvenated when divided, providing other landscaped areas with color, texture, and scent.

Retaining Soil Moisture and Protect Plant Roots with Mulch

Young trees, shrubs, and flowerbeds benefit from mulch application. Young trees are especially at risk of dying due to desiccating winter winds. Mulch protects young trees’ root systems from these cold, dry winds.

Mulching under young trees and other plants aids growth because they’re not competing with grass, groundcovers, or excess weeds that could easily pop up without a protective layer.

Mulch provides many benefits to perennials, native plants, shrubs, and trees by

Aerating the soil as it decomposes
Holding water in the soil
Regulating soil temperature to prevent frost heaving
Preventing soil erosion
Controlling weeds
Improving soil fertility
Preventing temperature extremes in the soil
Protecting trees, shrubs, and plants from lawnmowers and other landscaping equipment
Reducing soil compaction by limiting foot traffic.

Our team of experts is ready to guide you further regarding fall mulch applications and deliver extraordinary landscape services when requested.

Practicing Smart Watering in the Fall

Fall brings cooler temperatures and more chances for rain, so you don’t need to irrigate your landscapes like you did in July. Instead, reset your automatic sprinkler systems to a fall setting to conserve water and promote healthy landscape plants.

You need to be mindful of watering wisely since plants are entering dormancy. They don’t need as much water as they do in the middle of summer. However, your landscapes still need deep, infrequent watering to end the growing season well.

If you plant young trees this fall, ensure that you continue watering them well, at least once a week, for the first 4-6 weeks heading into the winter season so their roots can get established.

Planting Spring Bulbs This Fall

When you plant spring bulbs in your landscape, you‘ll have continuous beauty and color from early spring to early summer. Before planting your bulbs this Fall, wait until the soil temperature falls below 60°F, which is around Halloween. Start researching bulb availability and sources in September. Some will be available in-store, but some will need to be ordered online, depending on your desired selection.

Here are eight spring bulbs to add to your landscape this fall:

Alliums
Bearded iris
Bluebells
Crocus
Daffodils
Glory of the snow
Grape hyacinths
Hellebore

Remember to plant the bulbs with the pointy side up, allowing the roots to anchor into the ground. While these bulbs are dormant, their root systems develop over the winter.

When you plant flower bulbs, you can cluster them together to create a continuous color fest in early and mid-spring.

Consider planting bulbs in containers on your flagstone patios for instant color pop. You can move the containers with bulbs around as you please, altering your outdoor living spaces’ flow and overall design.

Learn more: Front Yard Landscaping Ideas with 5 Tips for Fall

Embracing Native Plants for Eco-Friendly Landscaping

Blend native plants into your landscape. Native plants are low-maintenance, hardy to Northern Viginia, and will invite pollinators into your property.

Native plants also require less water, fertilizer, and landscaping care than non-natives. They have adapted to the local climate and soil. For example, native plants can handle hot and humid Virginia summers and cold and icy winters.

You can divide your native perennial plants in the fall to naturalize other parts of your property and prevent overcrowding.

Popular perennial native plants for Northern Virginia include:

Bee balm
Black-eyed Susans
Coneflowers
Creeping phlox
Ferns
Wrinkled golden rod ‘Fireworks’
Yucca ‘Colorguard.’

Add a Chionanthus virginicus, commonly known as the fringetree, to your landscape this fall. This beautiful tree will offer showy spring flowers followed by fruits that ripen to a dark, bluish black in late summer. On top of that, you can enjoy beautiful yellow fall foliage.

Chokeberry ‘Low Scape Mound’ provides interest in spring, summer, and fall. It has flowers in the spring, glossy green leaves in the summer, and bold red leaves with dark edible berries in the fall.

At Campbell and Ferrara, we love natives. Our experts will aim to design native plants into your landscape plan, providing natural diversity while attracting wildlife to your outdoor living environment.

Trust Campbell & Ferrara for Year-Round Landscaping Services

At Campbell & Ferrara, our team of experts is ready to help you design and transform your outdoor area into an inviting outdoor living environment.

With fall approaching, now is a perfect time to begin working on your fire pit or outdoor kitchen project. Include strategically placed plants to add year-round beauty and consider installing LED lighting to enjoy your outdoor room into the evening during every season.

Sources:

Almanac.com, The Best Flower Bulbs to Plant in the Fall.

Extension.UMD.edu, Mulching Trees and Shrubs.

Extension.PSU.edu, Mulching Landscape Trees.

NashvilleTNHomeInspections.com, 11 Tips for End-of-Summer Landscaping.

Ibid, Caring for Young Trees During Summer.

TylerAroboretum.org, Why Divide Perennials in Fall?

USDA.gov, Mulch: Got Weeds? Need to Hold Water in the Soil?