Through the Garden Gate

Fall Gardening for Pollinators
Many gardens look rather dormant at this time of year. The spring and summer flush is over and if you haven’t planted enough autumn-blooming flowers, the pollinators will struggle to find food. So it’s worth a bit of time to do some research on what you can plant this fall that will bloom next fall. A website, Pollinators.org, is a good place to check for some ideas.
An abundance of flowers are blooming right now in my cottage garden, which I have planted exclusively for pollinators. One of the most stunning is the purple aster called Bill’s Big Blue. It’s grown to a good four- to five-feet tall and around, with many stems covered with quarter-sized brilliant purple flowers. It’s on my irrigation system, as is the large white aster (Aster ericoides ‘Monte Cassino’) that is loaded with small, dime-sized flowers.
Aster chilensis ‘Point Saint George’ appears to bloom forever; however, great caution must be taken before planting it. This six-inch ground cover aster wants to roam everywhere and will soon fill your entire garden and yard with its pretty purple flowers. The asters are buzzing with not only honeybees, but also tiny native pollinators.
Sedum ‘Autumn Joy’ is about to burst its tops with dusty pink flowers that the bees love. I have several of these nectar-filled plants. They are a breeze to grow, require nothing much more than some soil in which to sink their roots. Plant them away from your paths, as the stems can snap off if you bump them hard.
Coreopsis is in full bloom, as are the calendulas, both of which fill the lower spaces with their golden yellow sunshine.
Some of the mints and sky-blue bog sage (Salvia uliginosa) are water lovers, so I have them under the hanging birdbaths. The honeybees drink in the baths and gather nectar in the flowers. I am seeing little skipper butterflies enjoying the bog sage as I look out my window on the garden.
Catnip, rosemary, the mints, basils and especially the oregano with its deep purple blooms have flowers through September, as do the gaillardia blanket flowers. Keep the gaillardia dead- headed and the flowers never stop. They are such marvelous flowers, so bronze, red, golden and other colors in that spectrum.
Pink, white and maroon scabiosas continue to seed themselves and feed the insects with nectar … so does the gorgeous, deep-colored goldenrod (Solidago californica). Goldenrod is an easy plant to grow; many folks think it’s the plant that causes hay fever, but that distinction goes to ragweed, which happens to bloom at the same time as the goldenrod.
My salvias ‘Hot Lips’ are full of buzzing black carpenter bumblebees on the pretty red/white flowers. There are quite a number of salvias that are autumn bloomers. Betsy Clebsch wrote a fine book on the different salvias: when they bloom, when to prune and more.
Sunflowers and others in the aster family, including bright orange tithonias, bloom on into the fall. Snappy red-orange monkey flowers (Mimulus sspp.) and fire-engine red Lobelia cardinalis flowers are blooming in the bogs around the wildlife pond. A bog isn’t really necessary, just a mushy wet spot for these two happy flowers.
Lots of annuals go on until frost, such as cosmos, zinnias and hyssop, also called Korean mint. Purple Echinacea is a good pollinator plant. One of the very best butterfly plants is Verbena bonariensis. These tall skinny plants are topped with flat purple blooms and flower for months. The pipevine swallowtail butterflies are often nectaring on them.
Fall Nursery Weekends at Occidental Arts & Ecology: Offering perennial, organic heirloom starts on weekends from Sept. 7 through Nov. 3, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. A wonderful chance to begin the autumn planting season!
The California Native Plant Society begins its wonderful evening programs on Sept. 17, Tuesday, at 7:30 p.m., just in time for the fall planting season and the CNPS native plant sale in October, when Peter Veilleux will give a program on gardening with natives for long-lasting, self-sustaining landscapes. Peter is the owner of East Bay Wilds Native Plant Nursery in Oakland.
Meetings are held at the Luther Burbank Art & Garden Center at 2050 Yulupa Ave. in Santa Rosa. Please call Leia at 322-6722 for more information.
Please write me at

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for comments, etc. and have a happy planting season.