Want a gothic garden? Some examples of dark foliage to help your colors pop | The Compleat Home Gardener

This is also your last chance to tidy your garden before winter sets in.

The end of October is a celebration of Halloween and your last chance to tidy up the garden before some serious winter weather sets in.

It is not too late to mow and edge and trim your lawn. Rake the leaves first but if the fallen leaves on the lawn are small or very dry you can go over them with your mower to break them into tiny pieces that can feed the lawn.

Pull weeds and collect clippings to add to the compost pile or at least rake all the leaves and debris into a corner and weigh them down with fallen branches. Move clay pots and other containers that might crack under the eaves of the house or into a garden shed. Allowing containers to fill with water over winter encourages cracking.

Now about those pumpkins.

Enjoy your Jack O Lanterns as long as they stay firm and avoid rot. Carved pumpkins will not last as long as pumpkins and gourds that are not carved and all pumpkins that are kept dry under a porch will resist rotting. Once they go soft, pumpkins and fall squash can go into the compost pile but chopping them into smaller pieces will help them to decompose sooner.

Want to save the seeds? Scoop them out and rinse them off. Lay the clean seeds on a cookie sheet lined with a paper towel to absorb moisture. After a week the seeds should be dry and can be stored in a manila envelope for planting out next spring. S

eed saving means keeping seeds away from any moisture until it is time to plant. This is where those little anti-moisture paks come in handy – like the ones tucked into a box of new shoes. Add these to the paper envelopes or glass jars that you use for storing seeds.

GOTHIC GARDENING

Gardeners in Western Washington can build a landscape around plants with dark foliage but it is not as creepy as you would think. The darker the foliage the better the contrast with lime green and gold foliage creating a garden of high contrast and low maintenance color.

Best Groundcovers for some Black Magic:

Black Mondo Grass and Black Scallop ajuga create an air of dark magic for an ankle hugging dark and gothic carpet.

Tip: Pair these two groundcovers with white snowdrop bulbs for winter contrast and white alyssum in the summer. White always lightens up the gloom.

Best spring Tulips with Mysterious Dark Flowers:

Queen of Night Tulip, Black Parrot Tulip, Caravelle Design Tulip

If I am honest, these tulips are deeper purple than black, but in the gardening world lavender blooms get called blue and purple flowers get to be called black. Just go with it and pair these dark beauties with contrasting white or pale pink tulips for a lovely contrast of color.

Best Shrubs with a Gothic Touch

Weigela ‘Wine and Roses,’ Heavenly Bamboo ‘Plum Passion’ and the many forms of purple barberry from the Crimson Pygmy Dwarf barberry to the upright and narrow Helmond Pillar Barberry are shrubs that keep their dark color all summer. .

Many trees and shrubs turn deep burgundy in the fall or emerge with new growth tinged with purple, but forever purple barberries are easy to grow and easy to find at nurseries. Barberries will thrive in dry soil even near cedar trees so they make a great accent plant when used with variegated shrubs or groundcovers.

Best Trees for Brooding Beauty

Purple Beech, Purple Smoke tree, Thundercloud Purple Leaf Plum

We do live in the Evergreen State and so dark green, light green and pale green trees dominate the landscape. If you add a tree with purple foliage the dark and brooding color will stand out like a vampire among choirboys.

Once Halloween is over, go back to thinking of your garden as a place of peace and goodwill. After all, “gothic gardening” is just a theme that adds some drama to a frightful season of good fun.

Marianne Binetti has a degree in horticulture from Washington State University and is the author of “Easy Answers for Great Gardens” and several other books. For answers to gardening questions, visit plantersplace.com and click “As The Expert”. Copyright for this column owned by Marianne Binetti. For more gardening information, she can be reached at her website, www.binettigarden.com.