25 photos of autumn potted plants, easy fall planters. Decorate your exterior, driveway or terrace. Find ideas and inspiration.
With summer coming to an end in September and October, it’s time to start thinking about autumn decorations, and in particular autumn flower pots.
Before rushing off to garden centers and flower markets, it’s a good idea to know exactly what type of flower pot we’re going to make.
It’s time to choose containers, plants and flowers that are already available in the garden, cut a few bunches of grasses and harvest the squash. In fact, autumn pots can be very varied, featuring flowering plants as well as grasses, vegetables or pine cones.
Then we’ll know what to buy: which plants and what size?
Containers for my autumn pots
If you don’t have these containers at home, I’ve put links to the ones you can find in online stores (these are usually affiliated commercial links).
- Rattan or wicker baskets
- Fine wooden boxes (like oyster shells)
- Wooden crates
- The pots
- Aluminium basins and buckets
- Half-barrels and barrels
- Emptied pumpkins
Wicker baskets are available from garden centers at reasonable prices. They are usually fitted with a plastic lining on the inside to protect the rattan from moisture. They’re also available from Action (in France) in spring.
Autumn flowering plants
Here’s a list of the main flowering plants easily found in garden centers.
- Heather
- Asters
- Chrysanthemums
- Grasses: you can use plants or harvest stems of pampas grasses at the roadside.
- Ornamental cabbage
- Maple branches
- Heuchères
- Cyclamens
- Maritime cinerary
Pansies can also be used in an autumn pot. If winter is not too harsh, they will remain beautiful until spring.
I’m not going to tell you where to buy your plants – you already know that. That said, before going to the garden center, you should never forget to visit a nursery , which often has more beautiful and less expensive plants than a garden center. On the other hand, the choice of plants is more limited.
And , if you are in France, don’t forget the CAT (center d’aide par le travail), which often have great promotions for chrysanthemums.
Other autumn decorations
- Gourds and coloquintes
- Lanterns
- Lighting garlands
- Wheelbarrow
- Straw bale
- Pine cones
Faux maple leaf garlands can be used to light up the decor at night.
You can find bales of straw on the bon coin.
Outdoor lanterns:
Examples of autumn pot arrangements
Pumpkins in flowerpots
Pumpkins can be left all winter in the autumn arrangement if they’re sheltered from the rain. You can also use fake pumpkins made of plastic or plaster.
Autumn colors
When we think of autumn colors, we immediately think of oranges and beiges and browns, but there are also pinks and purples and, of course, greens.
Orange and brown colors
Pinks and violets
Summer heathers, asters and chrysanthemums make pretty pink pots. These plants go well with green or silver foliage, such as maritime cineraria.
6 autumn pots in detail
Here, I’d like to take a closer look at 6 autumn compositions that you can easily reproduce at home.
1 – Sedum glory
I don’t recognize all the plants, but you can replace some of them with well-known and easy-to-find ones.
- 1 large purple sedum
- 3 heuchers in 3 different colors
- 1 euphorbia
- 2 small green or variegated Japanese rush-type grasses
- 1 Falling Lysimachia nummularia aurea
2. Heathers and Grass
- a red grass such as pennisetum, swab grass
- 1 sedum spectabile
- 2 or 3 summer heathers
3 – Heathers and cyclamen
- 1 charcoal cutting
- 2 summer heather
- 1 maritime cinerary
- 2 cyclamen
- 2 thoughts
4 – Heathers and Cyclamen 2
- 1 or 2 small cyclamen or 1 large one
- 1 or 2 summer heathers
- 1 ivy
5 – Pink and blue
- 1 small blue tree
- 1 chrysanthemum or purple aster
- 1 blue fescue
- 1 summer heather
- 1 Ivy
- 1 sarcococca for fragrance
This composition will be easy to store all winter long.
6 – Heathers and cabbage
- 2 decorative cabbages
- 1 white heather
- 1 pink heather
- 1 silver plant, maritime cineraria, mugwort…
I hope this article gives you some ideas. Let me know if you find it useful, and if you’d like to see more flower arrangements explained in detail.
You can send me photos of your autumn potted plants if you’d like them to appear on this page.
More ideas for autumn pots and composition
Loose photos gleaned from the web.
