Southern Gardening from 2019

We have finally gotten some cool, fall weather, and it’s time to start planting our cool-season color, but sometimes we need to enjoy the summer color that’s getting its second wind.

If there is a showier plant in the fall than our Mississippi native Gulf muhly grass, I don’t know what it is. Since it is a native, it was not bred for any particular characteristic but struts its stuff naturally.

I love the autumn season because we’re starting to recover from Mississippi’s hot and humid summer with cooler weather. Not only do gardeners appreciate the season change, but so do many of our landscape plants.

Earlier this year, we were enjoying a cool and wet spring, and then one day, WHAM! We were thrown into a full-blown hot and dry summer that seemed never-ending.

This past weekend, I had the privilege and pleasure of being an invited speaker at the Gardening for Life Symposium hosted by Magnolia Plantation and Gardens in Charleston, South Carolina. I was a member of a diverse group of speakers from across the country.

I am thoroughly thankful I made the move to coastal Mississippi a dozen years ago. One of my truly enjoyable fall pursuits happens after the temperatures have gotten chilly. On bright, sunny fall days, I really like driving on Highway 90 to my office at the Coastal Research and Extension Center in Biloxi along the Gulf of Mexico.

For cool-season color, you can’t beat the old-fashioned plants our grandparents called Johnny jump-ups. We now call these pansy cousins violas, and they give the home garden big color.

I love when the calendar strikes December 1, because it means we are officially in the Christmas season. Now, I know it seems like many stores have had their holiday decorations out since before Labor Day, but none of that counts until we get to December.

Winter is finally here, whether you go by the meteorological date of Dec.1 or the upcoming astrological date of Dec. 21. To me, it means that I’m going to enjoy the freshly harvested cool-season greens from my little urban farm.

I’m continuing to catch up with my landscape and garden work after an extremely busy fall and early winter season. This past weekend was perfect to get some much-needed cool-season color planted.

Our Mississippi landscapes and gardens really had a tough year in 2019.

As we approach the end of the year 2019, I’ve been reflecting on gardens and gardening in general. I wrote several weeks ago about the changing attitudes and current perceptions that home gardeners have about their landscapes and gardens