How To Build A Fall Container Garden

Great Annuals for Fall Containers

• Ornamental kale and cabbage: the classic filler plant, with ruffled purple, pink, or white foliage that only gets more colorful as temperatures drop.
• Pansies and violas: reliable bloomers that will often push through light frosts and even rebloom in late winter.
• Mums (Chrysanthemums): the fall container staple for good reason, available in nearly every warm-toned color imaginable.
• Ornamental Peppers: compact varieties with fruit in purple, orange, and red add unexpected texture and a little heat-season holdover.
• Celosia: its feathery plumes in deep red and orange hold up beautifully into fall.
• Purple Fountain Grass: grown as an annual here, its wine-colored blades and soft, arching plumes make an easy, dramatic thriller for the center of a pot.
• Dusty Miller: silvery, velvet-textured foliage that cools down bolder fall colors and holds its look right through the first few frosts.

Perennials Worth Planting Now

• Coral Bells (Heuchera): grown as much for their colorful, ruffled foliage as for their delicate flowers; they’re evergreen and will anchor a container through winter and reward you with early spring blooms.
• Stonecrop (Sedum): Varieties like ‘Autumn Joy’ are drought-tolerant, sturdy, and just hitting their rusty-pink peak in fall.
• Ornamental Grasses: excellent “thriller” plants that add movement and hold their color well into winter.
• Asters: a native pollinator favorite that bursts into purple or pink blooms right as everything else winds down.
• Black-Eyed Susans (Rudbeckia): cheerful golden-yellow blooms with dark centers that keep flowering well into fall and bring in pollinators.
• False Sunflower (Heliopsis): a sturdy, sun-loving bloomer with bright yellow daisy-like flowers that hold their color through cooler weather.
• Creeping Jenny (Lysimachia): a low-growing, chartreuse trailing plant that makes an ideal “spiller,” draping over the edge of a container.
• Coneflower (Echinacea): tough and drought-tolerant, with daisy-like blooms in pink, orange, or white that fade into striking seed heads for birds to enjoy over winter.

Planting perennials in containers now means you can either let them overwinter in a sheltered spot or transplant them into the garden bed come spring, giving you two seasons of use from one purchase.

Getting Started: The Basics

1. Pick the right container. Fall containers can handle a bit more shade tolerance than summer ones, but good drainage still matters. If you’re leaving a container out through winter, choose frost-resistant materials like glazed ceramic, fiberglass, or metal.
2. Refresh or replace your soil. If you’re reusing a summer pot, pull out spent plants and roots, then mix in a couple of handfuls of fresh compost or a slow-release fertilizer to give new plantings a boost.
3. Follow the “thriller, filler, spiller” formula. A tall centerpiece (ornamental grass), mid-height fillers (mums or heuchera), and a trailing edge plant (creeping jenny or trailing ornamental peppers) create a full, balanced look without much guesswork.
4. Water less, but don’t forget it entirely. Fall’s cooler air means containers dry out more slowly, but they can still need a drink during dry stretches, especially newly planted ones.
5. Watch the forecast. Most fall annuals and perennials tolerate a light frost, but if a hard freeze is coming, move tender annuals such as ornamental peppers or celosia to a covered porch.