A Warm Welcome to Fall

While the dried gourds and 12-foot-tall skeletons are all well and good, we see fall a little differently.

Around these parts, autumn is planting season. Late September through November is just about the best time of the year for native seed—but why, you might ask? 

That 10-ish-week window before the first frost opens up a world of possibility, giving your future flowers, trees, crops and grasses a fighting chance to take root and build some resilience before the colder weather creeps down south.

Of course, all this native planting is easier said than done. Nature knows which direction its heading, dropping its seeds in all the right places at all the right times, but firmer grounds present a more challenging domain for human hands. Our simplest advice come in fives:

1. Choose wisely. Certain selections are better equipped for colder weather—flowering plants like serviceberry and holly, for example—and may even sprout a bit heartier than they would beneath the sumer heat. Take a fine-tooth comb to your seed list and do a little research before you break out the rakes and trowels.
2. Size up your space. Your native plants will still need their fair share of sun and moisture throughout the fall and winter, so make it easier on yourself and seek out the space that invites them both. Think about where you get the most sunshine, where the most rainwater collects and where you can assure regular drainage.
3. Weed now, smile later. Perennial weeds have the potential to pilfer nutrients from your plants over the course of the cold, so be sure to pluck around the danger zones. Not to mention, you’ll be that much happier with a cleaner, crisper yard in the spring.
4. Easy on the water. A few spritzes should suffice through the fall, and unless it’s an unseasonably warm winter, nature should be able to handle all the incubation on its own. Once temperatures start to drop below 40°F, you run the risk of freezing it inside the soil and inflicting root damage.
5. Call us. Everything above read like mumbo jumbo? Don’t sweat it. Schedule a consultation with our team and we can hatch a fall planting plan together.
   
   And for bonus points?
   
   
6.  See Robin. One of our favorite writers and ecologists, Robin Wall Kimmerer, is coming to Charlotte this December! Get your tickets now and hear from one of the most impressive and accomplished public educators in the environmental movement. Hope to see you front and center.