Leadwort and heuchera -- nice choices!

I've added some purple asters this year in pots. I figure they can be unpotted and divided next year for the garden.

And more nandina shrubs. They are so colorful year round in my zone.

Zinnias, cosmos, and salvias currently in the garden will provide color until first frost.

Meanwhile, there are snapdragons, alyssum, and columbine I'm getting started in flats.

Hopefully, the columbine will get a headstart and bloom next year.

I now have 4 different kinds of aster - hurrah! A fall favorite - in deep mauve, deep purple, violet, and light blue. The mauve I started last year and this year it is flush with blooms (didn't even realize last year what it was), the deep purple and light blue I purchased this late summer and fall, and the purple I inheirited. Also have coreopsis, and I also just inheirited a mauve mum. Also have yellow daisy-like flowers - rudbekia? - and sneeze weed. Sneeze weed - sounds aweful, but it's wonderful for color. The variety I bought is light pink with mauve throats.

I'm also lucky to have a surprise flush of roses this fall. :) This fall has been terrific for flowers. Don't have any fall bulbs, but I do have some wintergreen that is putting out berries, decorative strawberries that are turing fall colors, and burning bush that is trying to trun orange and red. Oh, and my yellow rose, Golden Showers, has put out a few orangish hips. Cool, huh?

I have indigenous aster (New England) and goldenrods, and added mums and Prof. Kippenburg asters to the beds. Also, I added a lot of ornamental grass this year... Pennisetum, Miscanthus, Chasmanthia and more because they look good through fall and winter, almost until April.

After the goldenrod and asters and grasses tops die, I leave them because the dead foliage and seed heads look beautiful. That and the Rudbeckia and Echinacia seed stalks provide some texture in the winter garden.

Cady (or anyone else), I'd love to know more about perennial ornamental grasses. Of course it's too late to plant them now, but I want to plant something that will grow tall and plumey around the tulip and daffodil beds I just dug. The idea is to have something interesting to look at that will hide the leaves after the bulb flowering period is over, plus I love fluffies in the garden. There's a patch of something wheat colored, maybe 5 feet tall with wavy tops, in a yard at the top of my street. It looks terrific now that all the bright colors are getting more subdued. Could you recommend some grasses I could plant next spring? Do you plant grasses in spring? I miss my ferns so much (most of them have disappeared due to the frost and even the green ones are pretty wind-tattered) that I need something new to think about and plan for! Thanks.

The dwarf fountain grass Pennisetum Alopecuroides 'Hameln' which grows to 2-3 feet makes for nice winter interest as well as the much taller Maiden Grass varieties (5-8 feet). They can be planted in the Spring if you can find them and will grow quickly to quite a good width (plan on a few feet of space around each) They usually appear in nurserys when they are a good size in their pots later in the season.