As the leaves change color in the crisp autumn air, let the season inspire you to add vibrant hues to your garden. Creating a colorful fall garden is easy and budget-friendly with impatiens. These vivid, cheerful blooms illuminate even the shadiest garden beds or patios, adding a burst of living color to your outdoor spaces.
Whether you’re a seasoned gardener or a beginner, choose top-performing varieties like Beacon’s Impatiens from PanAmerican Seed. Available in eight colors and eight mixes, you can fill baskets, window boxes and shade landscapes with confidence. Follow the expert tips below to help your garden thrive this fall by incorporating impatiens.
Why impatiens?
Impatiens offer high resistance to impatiens downy mildew (IDM) disease, ensuring your garden remains healthy and flourishes over time. No more money spent replacing failing flowers. Plus, impatiens are self-cleaning plants that will continue to bloom profusely all season long!
Impatiens are also a cost-effective choice because they offer continuous color while filling larger spaces and baskets. With the ability to grow up to 18 inches tall and spread 14 inches wide, they cover a lot of ground with minimal effort and expense.
Choosing budget-friendly impatiens isn’t the only way to save on gardening. Use unexpected objects like upcycled containers to add a unique look to your garden without the added cost for flowerpots.
Fill your spaces with nonstop color
As the last days of summer slowly fade away, brighten up a shady porch with tons of color by planting seasonal orange-colored impatiens and other shade-loving plants. Orange impatiens, for example, offer a bright hue with green foliage for your fall garden decor. They look beautiful planted in rustic, decorative flower pots or barrels.
If you’re looking forward to a full-shade garden of bright, beautiful blooms, you’ll want to pair vibrant pinks and reds to make this space pop and come to life.
You can also celebrate the fall season by incorporating hay bales, pumpkins and gourds, bare branches and other flair to your containers. Placed at your doorway, this stunner can greet trick-or-treaters in October or welcome Thanksgiving guests.
Top impatiens gardening tips for a flourishing fall garden
You can nurture your impatiens to encourage growth and health through a few important steps. Impatiens make for excellent landscape, border and container plants. They prefer loose, moist and well-drained soil and do best in partial to deep shade.
The closer impatiens are, the taller they will grow, so space accordingly. For flower beds, plant 8 to 12 inches apart so the plants will stay low to the ground. If you want them to grow upright, you can plant them about 6 inches apart. If you’re using them as ground cover, you can space them 10 to 12 inches apart. Once your impatiens are in the ground, they’ll need at least 2 inches of water a week. If the flowers show a bit of wilt, no worries! A good, long soak will perk up plants in no time. (BPT)
