When you live in the Northeast, your urban garden is going to have to have seasons.Winter will be a time of dormancy, of pale yellows, grays, and browns. Spring will be that pale-green miracle of bulb shoots and then blossoms, trees and shrubs pushing buds, flowers, and finally full green leaves with the approach of summer’s heat, of grasses coming green again.

Summer will continue spring’s flowing energy: abundant flowers, emerald-green, sculpted hedges and shrubs, and fine, ornamental grasses such as zebra grass and pink pampas.And then, last, and far from least: fall.

A fall NYC urban garden is as beautiful as Shakespeare’s own thoughts on the season: “That time of year thou mayst in me behold/ When yellow leaves, or none, or few do hang…” As foliage breaks from its recent green tradition and suddenly bounds toward yellow, orange, red, and the many gradations among them, many of us feel especially close to the land, toward nature itself.

This is a very important time to tend to one’s garden – or to start one! Fall is actually a wonderful time to get a jump on an NYC urban garden for the coming year. Whether it’s planting bulbs, mulching shrubs, wrapping fruit trees and taking them indoors, a fall urban garden is a busy urban garden in NYC. There is much to do and much to appreciate.If you have raised tomatoes or herbs, now is the time to get your final harvests in before the frost. It’s better, keep in mind, to bring in green tomatoes and let them ripen in the warmth of your home than to leave them to winter’s mean bite.When it comes to blooming flowers for your fall NYC urban garden, here are some beautiful choices:

• Michaelmas daisies
• Blue mist shrub
• Turtleheads
• Chrysanthemums
• Sneezeweed

If you don’t see how you can possibly keep beautiful flowers blossoming through the fall season, bear in mind that creating beautiful urban gardens is an area of particular expertise – and joy – of Floral Studio. We create lasting visual poetry to enhance every season – happy fall!