Create a moody fall container

While I’m not necessarily pleased about the summer being over, I always look forward to figuring out the palette for my fall urn. I like the traditional, warm harvest hues—oranges, yellows, reds and browns—but I also like the darker plants you can find at this time of year, from ornamental black peppers to deep purple ornamental kale. I call this particular design my moody fall container. It contains sombre hues with a few subdued, yet vibrant touches, like the dark pink mums.

Planting your moody fall container

The plants I used in the urn include, clockwise from the ornamental purple kale: a ‘Blue Vates’ kale I grew from seed and dug out of one of my raised beds, a pinky-purple chrysanthemum, ajuga that I pulled out of my lawn (it’s spread in one particular patch), a black ornamental pepper and a delightful heuchera with purple on the underside of the leaves. When I took apart this urn to make way for my winter design, I planted the ‘Blue Vates’ kale in one of my raised beds where it came back the next spring. The heuchera is also still thriving in my front garden. That’s the great thing about using perennials in your fall pots. You can tuck them in a garden in the fall to overwinter, depending on where you live.

This moody fall container features one of my favourite autumn palettes.

I was having so much fun with my moody palette, I couldn’t resist filling another terracotta pot with an ornamental cabbage, ajuga and a black ornamental pepper.