Fall 2024/Winter 2025: Garden Highlights

Before diving deep into Spring, I’d like to recapture and share some Fall/Winter highlights from my garden:

In Autumn, when the trees play dress-up in their colorful finery, we eagerly embrace what Dan Hinkley called “reverence for the leaf.” Two native trees were foliage superstars in early Autumn. Oxydendrum arboreum (Sourwood Tree) produced gorgeous, large, lacquered leaves in red and purple and Sassafras albidum was aglow in leafy, buttery-yellow. Later, in November, the resplendent Japanese Maple, Acer japonica ‘Aoyagi Ukon,’ was the center of attention. Photos below.

When annual Lantana’s yellow flowers fade in the Fall, they are replaced by luminous clusters of midnight-blue berries. A happy bonus for the garden — and for the birds. Photos below.

Was climate change the reason Coleus went wild and Brobdingnagian? Maybe. Yet, in Autumn, despite outgrowing their container, the plants provided migrating hummingbirds with a very welcome departing gift of nectar-rich flowers. Photos below.

In January and February 2025, the garden looked magical in frosty-white. Photos below.

I do try to keep the bird feeders full, especially in Winter. I love having songbirds visit the garden. Hawks, not so much. Photos below.

Finally, this is a good time to share Vita Sackville-West’s cautionary note about plant catalogs: “I have grown wise, after many years of gardening,” she said, “and no longer order recklessly from widely alluring descriptions which make every annual sound easy to grow and as brilliant as a film star. I now know that gardening is not like that.”

Next Post: 2025 Spring Garden.

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A Garden Blog by Lois Sheinfeld

Fall 2024/Winter 2025: Garden Highlights