Note to myself: Stop fussing and start digging for more fall color

By Jane Clute - Special to The Herald

For years, I've fussed and fumed at myself for not having enough fall color in our yard. Especially when it comes to shrubs and berry-producing plants that birds love. Yet, I haven't done a blessed thing to make it happen. But if you intend to plant shrubs, November is prime time to get out the shovel.

Sure, we have a beautiful Japanese maple and some colorful shrubs, including nandina with their clusters of bright red berries in the winter, and several golden mophead cypress, which really are somewhere between chartreuse and gold. Now that's a shrub that really lights up the landscape.

The mopheads like to get sorta tall and pointy on top, so I keep a lid on 'em by taking good-size cuttings to use in flower arrangements or to stand alone in a pottery vase. Gotta love this shrub.

A flowering almond bush I brought from mom and dad's is here for sentimental reasons. It doesn't look like much most of the time, but it sure is pretty in spring when it's covered with pale pink blooms that remind me of chenille knobs on a childhood bedspread. Matt pointed the bush out the other day and noted that it's loaded with golden leaves in fall. Somehow, I'd never noticed how attractive it is this time of year.

Also love our loropetalum. We have a couple of gorgeous ones with burgundy leaves to drool over. Make that one gorgeous loropetalum; I got lazy and didn't trim the other one back severely enough to keep it lush and full. But folks are always asking about the one at the end of the driveway, which is a beaut if I say so myself.

You'll know when it's been trimmed because you could ride on its lower lip, but soon it forgives me and those infernal clippers and goes back to the business of primping and showing off its graceful limbs dotted with cute little leaves that shout, “Look at me!”

My loropetalum — there are lots of different varieties, including green versions — turn into sure-enough glamour queens in late spring, when they're sprinkled with magenta “flowers,” each looking like several pieces of short, skinny fringe that's been hot-glued to the branches.

This shrub has a lot to crow about. For starters, it's an evergreen — which means it doesn't get nekkid in winter. Once established, it's pretty drought tolerant too, and nothing seems to bother it. Although it prefers full sun, the entire plant family can tolerate some shade, so that's good to know.

Can't remember the variety I bought (like a kid, I just went for the color), but it likes to grow, so you have to sit on it. Ruby, on the other hand, is the baby in the loropetalum family. It gets between 3 and 5 feet tall and maybe 3 feet wide, so it makes a great foundation shrub.

A walk around the neighborhood is what started all this talk about colorful shrubs; that and a neighbor's fiery red burning bush (Euonymus alatus “Compactus”). We were booking it past that thing yesterday when it made me turn around and retrace my steps. Not only is it spectacular; it's absolutely loaded with teardrop-shaped berries so tiny, so shiny and so red they look fake.

The gardener wasn't home when I called — he's always working in that yard and it shows — but his wife said she'd never seen so many berries on it. And yes, the birds must love those berries because the bush is by her mailbox and “every time I go out to get the paper or put mail in the box, something flies out of that bush.”

Dwarf burning bush is supposed to get about 4 feet tall and just as wide. It's easy to care for, rarely if ever needs pruning, has tiny yellowish blooms in spring and the green foliage will turn a brilliant scarlet in fall, as long as it's planted in full sun.

Dark, overcast days remind me that I like to be planted in full sun, too.