Extend your garden season and build healthier soil in the process.
In the temperate Pacific Northwest, gardening through the fall and even winter months can be pretty easy, and very rewarding. Fall gardening also builds and protects your soil, and makes spring garden start-up go more smoothly.
So once the blooms have passed their prime and the summer veggies have petered out, let the fall action begin. The easiest thing to do in your fall garden is plant cover crops.
If you want to grow edibles, it’s not too late to transplant brassicas like broccoli and cabbage for late fall harvest, as well as garlic, onions and leeks for spring. Kale and Swiss chard will crank out hearty greens for months.
Fall is also a great time to expand your collection of native ornamentals that thrive in the climate here, attract wildlife, and add beauty to your yard with minimal maintenance.
So, how do you get started?
Visit a demonstration garden (yes, in the fall) to see how it’s done. Then bring your inspiration home to your yard — and to your neighbors. Natural gardening, without harmful chemicals, protects our children, pets, wildlife and waterways.
Blue Lake Natural Discovery Garden, Fairview
Bring the kids!
Metro’s Blue Lake Regional Park is an ideal setting for this kid-friendly garden. Interpretive signs help visitors of all ages identify and interact with plants, and educate growers about organic gardening techniques. The garden is divided into themed sections, including a native plant section that provides year-round gardening inspiration.
Cooper Mountain Demonstration Garden, Beaverton
Learn about native plants
The Cooper Mountain garden, located in a 231-acre Metro nature park, offers information on a wide range of colorful, low-maintenance and wildlife-friendly plants that thrive in the region’s dry summers and wet winters. A fall visit rewards visitors with fall foliage and glowing grasses that you see here only this time of year. Gather ideas here for planting your own natural, pesticide-free garden at home.
Natural Techniques Demonstration Garden, Southeast Portland
Make the most of the rain with a rain garden
Find inspiration at this home-sized garden. Metro’s Natural Techniques Demonstration Garden in Southeast Portland replicates a typical Portland residential lot. Learn how to add a rain garden, check out a compost demonstration, and decide which native and drought tolerant plants would work in your yard.
Oregon Tilth Demonstration Garden at Luscher Farm, West Linn
Get the inspiration and know-how to grow edibles through the fall
Oregon Tilth’s 6,000-square-foot year-round organic demonstration garden is part of the historic Luscher Farm. It’s full of practical and inspiring ideas for how to grow food and flowers organically, including easy space-saving techniques to pack more into your yard, and urban composting methods that divert kitchen scraps out of the garbage and into the yard where they transform into rich, soil-building humus.