Pink Flowers Can Look Right at Home in Fall
Pink flowers from these annuals, shrubs and perennials provide a surprising color complement to fall foliage.
We don’t always think of pink as a fall color, but when New Jersey gardener Stacy Ling’s pink spring and summer annuals held on well into autumn, their pink flowers made a delightful picture amid late-season yellows, oranges and reds.
Finding herself with a bumper crop of zinnias and snapdragons one spring, she added the extra seedlings to an empty space atop a retaining wall at near the front of her home, to which she and her family had recently moved.
The zinnias proved perfect for the space, attracting bees and butterflies throughout summer and blooming beautifully up until fall’s first frost. The snapdragons surprised Stacy with their consistent performance throughout the growing season, despite a very hot and dry summer. They took a short break at the height of the heat, but resumed blooming for autumn, adding their pale pink flowers alongside the deeper magentas of celosia, which had sprouted as a surprise from the soil’s seed bank. Also surprising: the way these pink hues did not clash amid the colors of autumn.
“I wasn’t thinking pink for fall,” she explains. “I was not expecting those snapdragons to keep going. But I think the pink worked well” with the warm-hued fall foliage of deciduous trees and shrubs in the background. The property’s many mature evergreens also made a nice neutral backdrop for this area of the garden.
While zinnias and snapdragons can persist deep into autumn, being annuals they last but one growing season and will need to be replanted for a repeat show. Happily there are shrubs and perennials that can provide more permanent pink flowers in fall.
Among shrubs, many panicle hydrangeas age to pink, like Limelight Prime. Where hardy, a fall-blooming camellia like Just Chill Red Tip can offer fresh pink flowers ahead of winter.
The aptly named ‘Pink Pearl’ agastache is a perennial that blooms into autumn if deadheaded in summer, while Tiny Tortuga turtlehead and fall anemones like Curtain Call Pink naturally begin their bloom cycle in this season.