Autumn takes your breath away with its fabulous canvas of changing colors, but it also takes the blooms away. Those wonderful flowers that delight the eye throughout summer fade away quickly as the season changes.
Don’t despair, flower lovers. There are still many beautiful blooms and blossoms to “ooh and ahh” over as summer gives way to fall.
1. SUNFLOWERS
Cold nights mask the sunflowers charms, so get out to your Metro Parks to see these beauties before they’re gone. Ashy sunflower and prairie dock are still shining bright in the prairies at Battelle Darby Creek and Prairie Oaks. Rosinweed steals the show in the fields at Glacier Ridge.
2. ASTERS
Here are true gems of autumn fields and prairies, with gorgeous shape and color through September and well into October. The purple-blooming New England asters show their splendor in fields throughout the parks, with excellent displays at Walnut Woods.
3. GOLDENROD
Swathes of goldenrod carpet fields in all the parks with their intensely yellow flower heads. The blooms are at their best through most of October. A large field of goldenrod is beautiful, but add companion flowers, such as asters, and you have a real treat to behold.
4. SUMAC
The brilliant red leaves of the low-growing sumac, dotted amongst the yellow of stiff goldenrod, create one of autumn’s most spectacular views in the fields at Clear Creek, off the Cemetery Ridge Trail. Don’t miss it! You can see it through the middle to end of October.
5. THISTLE
The native field thistle is a member of the sunflower family with flower heads that range in color from pink to lavender. They are best seen in the fields at Pickerington Ponds and in the Pleasant Valley area at Battelle Darby Creek.
hardy ageratum and passionflower combined with sweet autumn clematis with sun queen perennial sunflower peeking thru the clemati. I have sunqueen, and the false sunflower, peeping thru sweet autumn, but the two purple will not grow for me.
By the way, some of the big time gardeners in Columbus’s past planted roses, like the Cherokee rose, with species clemati in quarries. Lots of flowering vines will keep up output if provided with enough water. The Columbus Zoo had open zoos in some quarries off S. High Street, but some of the animals escaped in the flood year of 59. The quarries provided protective planting spaces as well, creating areas zones warmer. They had purchase papers to include drawings of what had been sold by Amerindians in the 1500 and 1600s..
Thanks, Cindy. It’s great to see colorful blooms in fall. Good luck with your growing. I hope you can get out to some of the parks to see our wildflowers at their peak.