Love Your Landscape – October 2019

Jacksonville is one of the best locations in the Rogue Valley to enjoy the beauty of autumn.

If you have witnessed this stunning time of year in Jacksonville and taken in all the vivid colors of the season, you may have located a favorite tree or two. Maybe a tree in your own yard or somewhere in our beautiful town you’ve found a tree that you keep coming back to because of the amazing fall beauty.

This month, we’ll enjoy a colorful show that lasts several weeks, thanks to our large number and variety of deciduous trees and shrubs throughout town.

You also have an opportunity to create fall beauty in your own landscape by planting specific trees and shrubs that have dramatic fall color during the autumn season.

Here are a few fall color tree suggestions:

For bright yellows: Birch, Aspen, and Ginkgo.

For bright reds to oranges: Red Maple (Autumn Blaze, Red sunset, October glory) Japanese maple, Sourwood, Red Oak, Sugar Maple.

A rewarding strategy to plan in your landscape is to plant specific trees and shrubs that will give you early, middle and late fall color. In this way you’ll be able to enjoy different colors that last several weeks rather than one big show that may only last a few days. Fall and spring are good times to plant, but fall has added advantages that spring just can’t match.

For a new tree, shrub or perennial fall, is the best time to plant because it gives the roots a strong push before the coming spring. When a plant goes dormant during the winter, energy transfers to the roots. The better and more extensive the root system, the healthier the plant will be during the growing season and all year-long. The roots do the gathering of the nutrients for the plant and the bulk of the water intake for the plant.

If a tree is planted in fall as opposed to spring, it will be less stressed in its growing season because of the head start the root system has during the winter months.

We have a significant dry season in the Rogue Valley with several months where we may not have any significant precipitation. One advantage of planting in the fall is the rainy season is generally just around the corner. Once the rain begins, the need to water new trees, shrubs and perennials goes away as long as we’re getting substantial amounts of precipitation.

It’s an investment to buy planting material so it’s good insurance to give your investment the best possible scenario for success by planting in the fall.

I hope you take in the beautiful colors of fall and add a few plants of your own to enjoy.