Welcome to our comprehensive September garden tour here in zone 6A upstate New York. This is when we showcase how intentional design choices, strategic plant selection, and consistent care keep our half-acre suburban garden vibrant and engaging even as summer transitions to fall. Since building our home here in 2018, we've been refining our approach to creating spaces that perform beautifully throughout the entire growing season.

The Design Secret: Creating Garden Vignettes with Purpose

Before we dive into specific plants and areas, there's one crucial design principle that ties our entire garden together - our garden vignette formula. In every area you'll visit today, look for this simple but effective combination:

• Something lime green or chartreuse (lemon coral sedum, lemony lace elderberry)
• Something green (boxwoods, evergreens, standard foliage)
• Something bluish (blue spruce, artist blue Ageratum)
• Something purpley-reddish foliage (midnight wine weigela, purple castor bean)
• An evergreen for structure (spruce, arborvitae, juniper)

This repeating pattern creates cohesion throughout the garden while still allowing each space to feel unique. It's our design shorthand for creating balanced, visually interesting compositions that feel intentional rather than random.

Late Season Workhorses: Annuals That Keep Performing

Verbena Bonariensis: The Self-Seeding Wonder

One of our most valuable late-season performers is Verbena bonariensis - that light, airy, wispy texture you'll see throughout the garden paired with Rockin' Playin' the Blues salvia. We planted this once about three years ago, and it's been reseeding itself ever since. The pollinators are absolutely bonkers for it.

The beauty of this self-seeder? It's incredibly easy to remove unwanted seedlings, so it never becomes invasive. It just pops up exactly where you need that vertical, see-through texture.

SuperTunia Pink Cashmere: Understanding Plant Vigor

This powerhouse petunia taught us an important lesson about matching plant vigor in mixed containers and beds. Rated as a vigor 4 (the highest), it will absolutely take over everything around it unless paired with equally aggressive growers.

When we paired it with lower-vigor plants, the results were predictably lopsided. But when we combined it with other vigor-4 plants like the plum dandy Alternanthera, we got spectacular results with balanced growth throughout the season.

Artist Blue Ageratum: The Must-Have Annual

This hybrid Ageratum appears repeatedly throughout our garden and for good reason - it's a non-stop bloomer that provides that crucial blue-purple tone from spring through fall. Unlike some annuals that take breaks, this one never stops.

The downside? You have to purchase it every year since it doesn't reseed and isn't available from seed. But for us, it's absolutely worth the investment for that reliable, long-season performance.

Hydrangea Success Stories and Learning Moments

Let's Dance Sky View: The Game-Changer

These continuous-blooming big-leaf hydrangeas from Proven Winners have completely changed our mind about macrophylla hydrangeas in our zone. Blooming from June clear through late September, they've proven that with the right breeding for reblooming and bud hardiness, big-leaf hydrangeas can be reliable performers even in zone 6A.

We're so convinced that we've added 10 more to the front of our property and are planting Let's Dance Blue Jangles (a compact variety) as front hedges in multiple areas.

The Drip Irrigation Difference

One of the clearest lessons this season? The dramatic difference between hydrangeas with drip irrigation versus those receiving only overhead sprinkler water. Our We-Wet hydrangeas getting lawn sprinkler water are merely surviving, while identical varieties on drip systems are thriving with lush foliage and abundant blooms.

This comparison holds true across our entire garden - consistent, targeted watering makes all the difference.

Storm-Proof Technology

Our new Incredible Storm Proof hydrangeas lived up to their name spectacularly. After a record three inches of rain in one day following months of drought, these stood upright while traditional Annabelle-types would have flopped. The stronger stem breeding really works.

Late Season Rose Performance

September might be one of the few times when all our roses bloom simultaneously. Not as prolifically as their spring flush, but enough to create significant impact throughout the garden.

Stars of the Show

Flavor at Paired: This new variety is showing incredible health with that gorgeous shell-pink color and bright yellow stamens. The clean foliage in late September is remarkable - vigorous growth that we'll need to contain rather than encourage.

Let's Dance Rhythmic Blue Hydrangea: Wait, that's not a rose! But these are performing so spectacularly with their second flush of enormous blooms that they deserve star billing.

Lark Ascending: This big, floppy David Austin rose with open blooms that pollinators can easily access remains one of our absolute favorites. We have three throughout the garden for good reason.

Container Lessons for Next Season

Our terrace containers taught us valuable lessons this year about plant matching and selection.

What Worked Brilliantly

• SuperTunia Pink Cashmere paired with equally vigorous plants
• Plum Dandy Alternanthera as foliage accent (favorite of the season!)
• Meteor Shower Verbena as a sterile, non-seeding alternative to Verbena bonariensis
• Mongave varieties that will overwinter indoors under grow lights

What We Learned

Double Delight Blush Rose Begonia: Gorgeous flowers and beautiful foliage, but simply doesn't have the strength to compete with more vigorous annuals. It needs either a spot by itself or pairing with equally low-vigor companions.

El Nino Chitalpa as centerpiece: Only blooming on terminal buds meant sparse flowers. If we'd Chelsea-chopped it early to create branching, we might have gotten better results.

The Great Sedum Flop of 2024

This was our year of universally flopping sedums. Every variety - Autumn Joy, Rock and Ground series, Night Ember - all decided to make like a donut with holes in the middle.

The lesson? Chelsea chop your Autumn Joy sedum in late May/early June even if it doesn't look like it needs it. Cut that early growth to the ground, and it'll branch where you cut, creating shorter, sturdier stems with more flowers that won't flop in late summer rains.

Evergreen Experiments and Successes

The Golden Bowling Ball

Anna's Magic Ball arborvitae has proven to be a perfect golden evergreen accent - maintaining its bowling ball shape naturally while providing that bright pop of golden color that works beautifully against blues and purples.

Weeping Norway Spruce Training

We're staking our weeping Norway spruce as tall as possible before allowing it to weep, creating more dramatic effect. The question remains - which direction will it weep, and might we use bent rebar to train the new growth into specific shapes?

Wildlife Moments

The garden in September is alive with pollinators - monarchs floating between Verbena bonariensis and butterfly bushes, bees battling over prime flowering real estate, and hummingbirds visiting our new Spigelia 'Apple Slices'.

These wildlife interactions remind us that a garden isn't just about aesthetics - it's about creating habitat and food sources that support the broader ecosystem.

Planning for Next Year

Walking through the garden in September naturally leads to making mental notes for next season:

• Fewer annuals in areas where they swallowed perennials (looking at you, Rockin' Playin' the Blues salvia)
• More drip irrigation in areas that struggled this drought year
• Better staking discipline for dahlias and tall perennials
• Continued expansion of the Let's Dance hydrangea collection
• Removal of underperformers like Light O'Day hydrangea (six years without a single bloom)

The Satisfaction of a Maturing Garden

What strikes us most during this September tour is how much the garden has matured since 2018. Trees that arrived as whips now provide structure and shade. Hedges that were individual plants now read as unified masses. Color combinations we experimented with have proven their worth (or taught us valuable lessons about what doesn't work).

Every season teaches us something new, and every tour shows both our successes and our opportunities for improvement. That's the joy of gardening - it's never finished, never perfect, always evolving.

What's performing best in your garden as summer transitions to fall? What lessons are you learning for next season's planning?

Thanks for growing with us!