Earthy Autumn Tones and Textures

By Ava Green

Taking our cues from Mother Nature, this season's fall clothing leans into all the colours and textures we love to celebrate each autumn.

Brown Is Back!

Dare we say that brown is the new black?! Take a look at our newest shades, including gorgeous maroon undertones. Rich, deep and bold, brown is a colour that feels as cozy as the season itself. 

If you’ve already built a capsule wardrobe, brown is one of the easiest colours to fold in for an instant, seasonally chic refresh.

Fall Wardrobe Styling Tip

Do you love autumn shades but aren’t sure they suit your complexion? Wear them on the bottom instead of the top. You’ll still get the payoff of autumn colours while complementing your skin tone.

Not sure how to bring fall colours to your wardrobe? Come on in! Sassyfras is just inside the Eising Garden Centre entrance, on your right, and we’re always happy to help you find pieces that flatter and bring you joy. 

Planting, Pruning, Pairing

By Ava Green

From its graceful, arching branches to the fragrant, lilac-shaped flower clusters that draw in a kaleidoscope of butterflies, bees and hummingbirds, Butterfly Bush (Buddleia davidii), also known as Summer Lilac, is a shrub worth including in your garden.

Landscape Value

Butterfly bushes bloom throughout the summer, with some varieties flowering into the fall, and offer a wide range of colours and intensities. 

They look best planted en masse or as part of a tiered garden, paired with smaller perennials or shrubs in front of them. Evergreens make a great backdrop for perennials, and this is a plant that would be perfect punctuation in front of a cedar or yew. Since butterfly bushes are slow to get going in spring, tucking shorter, early-blooming plants in front of them helps hide that lag while everything else fills in. 

As a bonus, Buddleia are deer and rabbit-resistant, making them a solid choice if critters are an ongoing issue in your garden.

Caring for Your Butterfly Bushes

Plant your Buddleia in full sun and well-drained soil. These shrubs want 8 hours of sun a day and don’t tolerate “wet feet”.

Here in Southern Ontario (hardiness Zone 6), the butterfly bush is a deciduous shrub that’s best treated like an herbaceous perennial: cut it back each spring, never in the fall, to keep it happy and blooming well. 

Be patient in the spring, and wait for buds to start forming before you prune, then cut each stem back just above a big, healthy leaf bud. Since butterfly bushes flower on new growth, this yearly cutback is what drives a full season of blooms. In fall, deadhead spent blooms to remove seed heads (on varieties that produce them) and help keep the plant from spreading. 

Plant in the spring or summer rather than fall, so your butterfly bush has as much time as possible to get established before cold weather arrives.

Great Variety!

Butterfly Bushes come in a range of heights and colours, so there’s likely a fit for almost any spot in your garden. A few examples:  

Dwarf: "Pugster" Series

A shorter, stalkier variety that still produces full-sized flowers in rich, saturated tones on new wood. Long-blooming plants; summer into fall. 

Best for: Grouping behind spring-blooming ground covers and shorter perennials | Sun: Full sun | Mature size: 24 in. tall × 24 in. wide

Medium Height: “Miss” Series

The “Miss” series offers medium-height varieties with a graceful habit and intensely coloured, fragrant, heat-tolerant blooms on new wood.  

Best for: The middle of beds and borders, planted in groupings | Sun: Full sun | Mature size: 48-60  in. tall × 48-60 in. wide

Tall Varieties

Vase-shaped and vigorous, with large, fragrant blooms, taller varieties of Buddleja davidii, such as ‘Black Knight’ or ‘Grand Cascade’, are absolute showstoppers in any garden.

Best for: Foundation plantings or the back of borders and beds | Sun: Full sun | Mature size: 6- 8 ft. tall × 4-8 ft. wide, depending on the variety

Hosts With The Most

Butterfly bushes will draw in bees, butterflies and hummingbirds; but every pollinator ultimately needs more than nectar. They also need places to lay eggs and support their young.

That's where host plants come in. Pairing your butterfly bush with plants like cherries, spicebush, Coneflower, Joe Pye Weed, Black-Eyed Susan, and New Jersey Tea provides pollinators with nectar diversity and places to reproduce. Some butterflies and moths will lay their eggs on a wide range of plants while others are far more particular. The Monarch butterfly is the best example: milkweed is the only plant that supports a Monarch caterpillar’s life cycle, so planting milkweed near your butterfly bush is essential if you want to support Monarchs specifically.  

Figuring out which host plants suit which butterflies and moths takes a bit of research, but as with most things in the garden, diversity wins. 

Come on in to Eising Garden Centre and look at the butterfly bushes in person; we’re here to help you find the right ones for your garden!

Other resources:

How to Keep Your Butterfly Bush Blooming: https://eising.ca/how-to-keep-your-butterfly-bush-blooming

5 Ontario native host plants for butterflies and moths:

https://nativeplantgardener.ca/the-host-with-the-most-hosting-moths-and-butterflies-in-your-garden/

Plants that support a butterfly lifecycle:

https://nativeplantconnection.com/create-butterfly-garden-ontario-native-plants/

Host plants for butterflies:

https://nativeplantgardener.ca/the-host-with-the-most-hosting-moths-and-butterflies-in-your-garden/

For Height, Drama, and Eye-Catching Interest

By Ava Green

Every well-designed garden needs an anchor, something tall and confident at the back that gives the whole planting a sense of structure and depth. While shrubs and trees often fill that role, perennials can also do the job beautifully. The back row perennials below are sturdy, reliable performers that thrive right here in Norfolk County. Plant them at the back of a border or the centre of an island bed as the backdrop that makes everything around them look better.

False Indigo, Baptisia australis

Baptisia is one of those perennials that gardeners discover and immediately wonder why they waited so long to plant it. In late spring, masses of stems are loaded with sweet pea-shaped flowers in shades of indigo blue, soft yellow, white or purple, and butterflies and bees absolutely love them. Once the blooms fade, the plant takes on a handsome, shrub-like form with blue-green foliage that holds its shape nicely for the rest of the season. While it’s slow to establish, it is extraordinarily long-lived, making it a plant you put in once and enjoy for decades.

Grows 3 ft tall and 3 ft wide | Full sun to partial shade | Blooms late spring to early summer

Hollyhocks, Alcea

Few perennials carry the nostalgic, romantic charm of a Hollyhock in full bloom. Their tall, stately spires are covered in large, papery flowers and are available in an irresistible range of colours from soft pastels to rich burgundies and deep purples, to classic white. They have a way of making a garden feel established in their first season, making them a desirable back-row choice.  

Grows 2-8 ft tall and 1-2 ft wide | Prefers full sun but will tolerate part shade | Blooms in summer 

Joe Pye Weed, Eutrochium or Eupatorium

A native plant that is as ecologically valuable as it is beautiful. Its large, showy clusters of rosy-purple flowers are a magnet for butterflies and pollinators from mid-summer well into fall, long after many other perennials have finished their show. If you want a back-row plant that works hard for wildlife while adding bold colour to the garden, this is an excellent choice. 

Grows 4-6 ft tall and 2-4 ft wide | Prefers part sun and moist soil | Blooms mid-summer to late fall

Russian Sage, Perovskia atriplicifolia or Salvia yangii 

When the garden fills up with yellow and orange blooms in late summer, Russian Sage arrives with a billowy, airy cloud of lavender-blue flower spikes rising above silvery-grey foliage. It catches the light beautifully and adds a softness that few other plants can match. Drought-tolerant once established and virtually pest-free, it is one of the lowest-maintenance perennials you can grow. Compact varieties are also available if space is limited. 

Grows 3-4 ft tall and 3-4 ft wide | Full sun | Blooms mid-summer to fall

Bear’s Breeches, Acanthus Mollis

If you’re looking for a plant that makes a genuine architectural statement, Bear’s Breeches is in a category of its own. Its large, deeply lobed, glossy foliage forms an impressive mound, while dramatic flower spikes shoot three to five feet upward, bearing creamy white snapdragon-like blooms accented with striking reddish-purple bracts. It is bold, sculptural, and unlike almost anything else in the garden. 

Grows 3-5 ft tall and 2-3 ft wide | Full sun to part shade | Blooms June to July

Foxglove, Digitalis 

There is something undeniably enchanting and regal about Foxglove with its tall spires of tubular flowers freckled and spotted on the inside, nodding gently in the breeze. The colour range is also wonderful, from soft creamy whites and pale pinks to rich purples and deep rose. Many varieties self-seed freely, naturalizing happily in the garden over time. One important note: every part of the Foxglove plant is toxic to people and pets, so it is best planted away from areas where children or animals play. In the right spot, however, it is one of the most beautiful back-of-the-border plants available. 

Grows 2-5 ft tall and 2 ft wide | Sun to part shade | Blooms in summer

Goat’s Beard, Aruncus diocus

Despite its stature, this is one of the most graceful and softening plants you can add to a shady border. Large, feathery plumes of creamy white flowers rise above finely divided, elegant foliage, bringing lightness to even the darkest corners of the garden. It is especially effective at softening hard edges, filling bare spots under trees, and providing a lush, natural backdrop for smaller shade-loving plants. Dwarf varieties are available for smaller spaces.

Grows 6 inches (dwarf) to 6 ft  tall and 2-4 ft wide | Partial to full shade | Blooms early to mid-summer

Gardener’s Tip: 

Removing spent blooms before they go to seed, also known as deadheading, encourages many perennials to produce a second flush of flowers later in the season. It takes only a few minutes and can extend your bloom display by weeks. 

Ready to Build Your Back Row?

The team at Eising Garden Centre is here to help you choose the right tall perennials for your space, your soil, and your sun conditions. Stop by and let us help you create a border that looks stunning from front to back, season after season.