Katie and Dawn chat with Katherine Tracey of Avant Gardens about plants for the late-summer/early-fall garden.

Katherine Tracey is co-owner with her husband and partner, Chris, of the destination uncommon plant nursery and garden design business Avant Gardens in Dartmouth, Massachusetts. She writes the plant focused blog: Garden Foreplay, and her articles have appeared in Fine Gardening magazine. She has lectured extensively at venues such as the New York Botanical Garden, Wave Hill, the Hardy Plant Society, Ladew Topiary Gardens and Blithewold in Bristol RI.

Katherine is always experimenting with new plants and unexpected plant combinations in her trial gardens. Her focus in recent years has been plants that invite butterflies, bees and pollinators into the landscape.

Katherine begins the conversation with an introduction to Avant Gardens which is known for their curated selection of uncommon plants and for their stone artisans. For more than 30 years, Avant Gardens has been a destination nursery and landscape installation firm, specializing in design, planting and hardscape construction. At the heart of their on-site gardens is a 225+ year-old oak tree around which they have constructed a lovely stone retaining sitting wall that brims with lush shade plantings.

In preparation for this episode of Design Me a House, Katie and Dawn visited Avant Gardens on a sweltering July Friday.

Katie and Dawn ask Katherine about which plants work with which type of garden. Katherine brings her extensive knowledge of plants, including unusual plants, to suggest some intriguing options.

Katherine notes that the garden is about to put on its last hurrah display before dormancy takes hold. Beginning in early September the late blooming perennials such as anemones and asters start to put on a show, with Dahlias and Salvia, plants that we grow as Annuals here in the north, provide a riot of color to complement the various daisy forms of plants.

Add the ripening berries of shrubs like Viburnum, Callicarpa and Hollies, plus the changing autumn foliage and you have a rich scene that celebrates the season.

Katherine suggests using late blooming plants in the garden because the foliage looks good all summer; after a plant blooms is when energy goes into seed production instead of the leaves. Some examples of perennials that merit attention: are Dwarf ironweed, Vernonia lettermanii, Japanese Shrub mint, Leucosceptrum japonicum and Lespedeza ‘Gibralter’, commonly known as Bush clover. Katherine always looks forward to the truly perennial Chrysanthemums that add their color to the landscape in October into November and provide food for the last butterflies and pollinators who visit.

Some of Katherine’s favorite plants include:

• Anemones….hail from Japan, in shades of white and pink. Lovely cut flowers late Aug-Sept

• Aralia cordata ‘Sun King’ (Spikenard) adds glowing yellow green foliage all Summer and in the fall produces white flowers followed by black fruits. Her honeybees find it a great resource.

• Asters, now classified as Symphyotrichum and Eurybia, Katherine likes to tout the Aromatic aster, S. oblongifolius “October Skies’ whose foliage is undisturbed by dry summers and produces almost sky blue flowers. There are many, many forms.

• Calamint, (Calamintha nepeta) begins fowling in July and Carris on through early fall.

• Chrysanthemum ‘Sheffield’ is a classic with peach colored daises, but there is also ‘October Glory’, with apricot-yellow flowers and ‘Wills’ Wonderful’, with its strawberry colored flower buds opening to shades of creamy yellow. Avant Gardens grows more but those three are the most vigorous.

And, of course, succulents are an Avant Gardens mainstay. Find gorgeous examples of container-planted succulents on site. Check out avantgardensne.com for listings of the occasional workshop to create succulent planters or centerpieces. Look for an upcoming fall workshop to create a pumpkin centerpiece featuring succulent cuttings.