Bright trees and shrubs add color flashes to fall gardens

ON A RECENT crisp afternoon I was kneeling in the soil, planting yet more allium, when I realized autumn was passing by while I was planning for spring. Fat spiders crouched lazily in their webs, perennials softly crumpled, and the soil was redolent with a ripe fall odor like the essence of apple. Dreaming of a waxing garden, I was missing the waning one.

In his little book, "The Garden in Autumn," Allen Lacy calls this "the neglected season." "There is a peculiar and widespread notion that spring and summer are the gardening seasons, and that autumn brings everything to an end, except for chrysanthemums," he writes. Instead, the season should be long and gratifying.

Consider how the weather, with its gentle drizzles, opalescent light and warm afternoons, encourages us to get outside. The average daily temperature is warmer in October than in April (OK, only by a single degree, but still) and there's significantly less rain than in March.

The garden's mellowing toward winter can evoke a corresponding mellowness in the gardener. Nearly everything that needs doing now, with the exception of preparing your plants to survive winter cold, can be put off until the days grow longer again.

Punching up fall color draws attention to the garden as the light fades and the days shorten. When I finally looked up from digging to admire the coral bark maple sheeting golden over my head, I could see that my garden needs a greater variety of fall color than the Japanese maples in pots on the patio. Perhaps because we have such an affinity for Asian gardens in the Northwest we tend to count on Japanese maples to carry the garden as the weather cools. But their finely dissected foliage pretty much hits a single note, beautiful as that note is.

To make your garden more compelling, try mixing in trees and shrubs with bold leaves and a wide range of autumn color. A vase-shaped witch hazel that shades golden, or purple smoke bushes (Cotinus coggygria) with leaves that turn luminously scarlet, are sure to draw attention to this most poignant of times.

Valerie Easton is a Seattle freelance writer and author of "The New Low-Maintenance Garden." Check out her blog at www.valeaston.com.