Late bloomers put the flash into fall gardens. Just when summer's show is coming to a close, asters, Japanese anemones, sedums and other fall bloomers begin to light up the garden. While daylilies and daisies performed all summer long, these late bloomers were simply waiting their turn. When the time finally comes, they dazzle until frost arrives.

Summer gardens are giddy and glorious, but fall flowers have a different character. They're somehow richer. They're more precious, too -- you waited a long time for them, nurturing the plants through the summer, so they're deeply rewarding. Like the bright, fresh weather, they're invigorating: Change is in the air.

Lots of well-known perennial flowers are among the most steadfast and sparkling fall bloomers. Chrysanthemums, of course, are traditional fall favorites. Sedums, which are extremely drought-tolerant, soldier through the summer and come into vigorous bloom in fall, attracting butterflies to their large flower heads. Monarch butterflies, in particular, visit sedums on their migration path to Mexico.

Early fall is also the season of asters of all kinds and colors, with flowers like clouds of beautiful blues and pinks. Toad lilies produce their freckled, orchidlike blooms on long, arching stems in fall, lighting up shade gardens. Ornamental grasses send up their spectacular inflorescences, shimmering in the autumn light as the days grow shorter.

Fall flowers deserve special consideration in a garden's design. It's nice to grow them along paths or in flower beds close to the house, where you can't miss them -- or you can plant them around the perimeter of the garden, where you'll be drawn outside in the crisp fall days to appreciate their contribution to the new season. Make room for them among summer-blooming annuals and perennials, where they'll provide structure and texture all summer and then extend the season -- giving your flower beds plenty of color and interest all the way to frost.

Garden shops stock good supplies of mums and asters, as well as an increasingly interesting selection of other fall bloomers, perfect for flowerpots for the front porch or patio. They're typically sold in larger containers than spring flowers, so they make a big impact as soon as you plant them. Plants in quart-size nursery pots, or larger, can also be planted right in flower beds to fill in bare spots where summer flowers have faded. They will need a little attention to watering if it doesn't rain, but in fall, cooler temperatures reduce evaporation of moisture from the soil, and even newly planted flowers really shouldn't need much pampering.

A well-designed and nicely situated garden has layers of color and texture, from the flower beds to the treetops. In fall, the blazing reds, rich russets and intense yellow colors of changing leaves on trees get much of the attention, but the trees actually tend to produce their show quite late in the season. Shrubs with great fall flowers fill the middle layer, and they start their show in September. Panicle hydrangeas, with their cone-shaped flower heads, look like living bouquets in a garden. Caryopteris, a small shrub (sometimes called blue mist or bluebeard), is covered with flowers in fall: It seems to glow in the light. Early fall is a perfect time to walk around a garden shop looking for shrubs with autumn interest. You might spot Bloomerang lilacs, Encore azaleas, or Bloomstruck hydrangeas, which all produce a fresh round of showy flowers in early fall. Roses usually put on a strong fall display, too. Their colors are brighter in cooler fall weather, their fragrance is more intense and the blooms last longer.

Don't forget the details. A few pansies or violas here and there in the garden bloom reliably through the fall, and even weather the winter in many areas. Their bright, charming faces will draw you outdoors in all kinds of weather. Fall-blooming crocus, tucked into a spot along the front walk, will greet you and your guests with an unexpected and welcome flash of purple. The charming, reflexed petals of hardy cyclamen flowers in a shade garden look like exotic little butterflies.

Early fall is way too soon to give up on the garden. The days are growing shorter, and summer's flowers are fading, but autumn has its own colors and cadence. Make sure some of the season's fireworks go off in your backyard.

The end of the summer is just the beginning of a new season of delicious harvests in a vegetable garden. No matter where you live or how much space you have, it's easy to grow fall crops -- in garden beds or in pots.

"Fall and winter gardening is a no-brainer," says Andrea Mull, who works on seed and vegetable trials at Territorial Seed Company in Oregon. In the Pacific Northwest, she says, fall gardening "is kind of a specialty we do," but she recommends it for gardeners everywhere. Cold climate gardeners have learned that fall and winter are ideal for beautiful leafy greens of all kinds, including lettuce and mesclun mixes, kale, collards and chard, and for root crops such as carrots, beets, parsnips and turnips. A late-summer sowing of peas will produce a healthy harvest of both peas and pea shoots for heavenly salads in the fall. Tomatoes, of course, are out of the question unless you live in an area completely without freezes.

Vegetables in the brassica family -- kale, collards, broccoli, cauliflower, kohlrabi, Brussels sprouts and cabbage -- produce their best and most delicious harvests in cooler fall temperatures. They actually taste even better after a touch of frost.

Although the days are growing shorter, conditions in the fall are great for growing, Mull says. The population of garden pests plummets as summer fades away. Rainfall may be more reliable, and soil moisture isn't lost to evaporation as quickly as it is in summer's heat. Temperatures in fall are also more comfortable: Neither you nor your crops will have to fight the heat.

Fall crops fall into two categories: those you plant and harvest before the holidays, and those that stay in the ground through the winter, to harvest in very early spring. It's easy to keep track of: Launch your fall garden with vegetables in the first group, those you can pick in the fall. Now is the time to plant them.

"We plant a lot in August," says Renee Shepherd, owner of Renee's Garden seed company. By the end of summer, "I've had all the zucchini I want," Shepherd says, and she is ready for kale, spinach, Swiss chard and Asian bok choy and tatsoi. "It's a great time for baby leaf mixes, and for lots of herbs, the ones you want to use every day." Shepherd's business is in northern California, but her company also has a trial garden in Vermont, where fall crops flourish with the help of lightweight fabric row covers, a low-tech way to keep the garden growing through nippy fall weather. She also plants radishes in late summer and early fall, along with kohlrabi, escarole and broccoli rabe.

Finding a place for fall vegetables can be a challenge if your tomato plants are still producing and the peppers are just hitting their stride. Claim some space on the family picnic table and start seeds in six-packs, Shepherd suggests, to give them a head start, and then make room for the little seedlings when you take out your old bean and zucchini plants. Or you can "sow seeds under and around things that are still growing," she says. Another approach is to grow fall crops in pots: Lettuces and greens adapt very well to containers. Their colors and textures are beautiful and make a nice change from mums in pots on the front porch. Pick leaves for salads all you like -- the plants will just keep growing.

Territorial Seed Company promotes fall vegetable gardening in a special catalog of winter blends, each with three or more varieties of carrots, kale, beets and other crops that perform better in the fall than in spring. Cool-season lettuce varieties such as romaine and oakleaf lettuce will produce a quick crop that even gardeners in frigid-winter areas can harvest before the first frost, Mull says. In the Pacific Northwest, she can harvest many crops through the winter, pinching off leaves from kale and collard plants for months. Mild-climate gardeners everywhere can do the same.

If you've never grown a crop from seed before, fall is a good time to get started, because leafy greens germinate especially well in response to changing temperatures. Radishes, peas, parsnips and carrots are also good bets.

You can also start with transplants of broccoli, spinach, cauliflower, cabbage and other vegetables, says Joan Casanova of Bonnie Plants, which ships transplants to garden shops around the country in the fall. When you buy transplants, they're already about six weeks old and are ready to go in the ground. Starting with transplants also gives you a chance to catch up if you neglect to plant seeds in August. You can still plant seeds later, if you like, but medium-size plants are more resilient than tiny seedlings, and they'll bounce back better from a light frost.

The biggest obstacle to success in a fall garden is not starting one at all. With a couple of packages of seeds, a six-pack of broccoli or kale, and a few minutes in the garden, you're on your way to an easy and delicious fall harvest. Dig in.

SIDEBAR

Under Cover

When you're ready to retire your vegetable garden for the year, it's time to plant a cover crop to see it through the winter. A planting of grains, grass, legumes or other cover crop adds fertility, helps limit weeds and invasive grasses, and builds soil structure. "Anything you can do to protect your soil for the winter is beneficial," says Andrea Mull of Territorial Seed Company. Cover crops look great, too.

SOURCES

Two great sources for seeds for fall crops are:

-- Territorial Seed Company, territorialseed.com

-- Renee's Garden, reneesgarden.com

For transplants:

-- Bonnie Plants, bonnieplants.com

Lightweight fabric row covers are available at garden shops and through mail-order specialists, including Territorial Seed Company.

It's time for a little summer getaway to a beautiful, relaxing spot. There's no need to pack a bag: Just step out the back door into your own garden.

Going on vacation in your own backyard may not sound very adventurous, but it's actually a very fine thing to indulge yourself in the pleasant surroundings you have worked hard to create. Instead of making all the arrangements and paying for airfare or hitting the road to get to a crowded beach, you might want to freshen up the flowerpots on the porch, get that mixed shrub bed you've been dreaming about off to a really good start, or simply take on a weekend project in a leisurely way, without worrying about whether you'll have a chance to finish by Sunday night. You don't need an itinerary; a modest agenda will do. You can cook out every day, get plenty of exercise and spend lots of time in the hammock.

People are catching on to taking time off in the garden. Every summer, the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society makes garden time a priority in Philadelphia, with pop-up gardens designed to inspire visitors to get the most out of gardening in the city. Inviting and imaginative pop-up gardens "show what you can do with a good sense of design and an appreciation for excellent horticulture, without spending a whole lot of money," says Alan Jaffe, PHS communications director.

Last year, 75,000 people popped into the city's pop-up gardens, which are open from late spring through the end of the gardening season. They're essentially urban backyards -- on a grand scale, considering that most Philadelphia gardens are the size of postage stamps -- but the ideas planted in these gritty urban settings can quickly find their way home to tiny backyards, rooftop gardens, balconies and suburban yards, too, Jaffe says. The pop-ups are, of course, full of pretty plants and colorful flowers. They also make imaginative use of recycled and repurposed materials for tables and seating. Above all, they take advantage of easy, hard-working plants that thrive in local conditions. They're fun, not work, and that's the point of a backyard vacation; think of it as play time, not garden chores.

Smart, low-key design ideas are abundant. In one PHS pop-up garden on South Street in Philadelphia's center city, old galvanized washtubs, aged to a soft, silvery gray, have been repurposed as planters full of roses. Raised flower beds burst with hollyhocks, zinnias and lavender. A 10-foot-long planter on an industrial-looking base is devoted to an herb garden full of parsley, dill, sage, rosemary and five different kinds of basil.

The ideas behind these planters and plantings are intended to be portable: Visitors can easily re-create them at home on any scale, Jaffe says. Mixing ornamental and edible plants makes sense in a small space, he says, but, beyond that, the combinations of flowers with herbs or vegetables prove that plant choices do not have to follow conventional rules. "We want to teach people about expanding the palette they bring to the backyard, to use unusual containers and found objects," he says. "When you express your artistic sense, you're bringing your own personality to the garden."

This summer, a pop-up garden at uCity Square expands on the edible-as-ornamental theme. Parallel rows of large raised beds filled with summer flowers run along either side of a wide walkway. Simple iron arches over the walk will be covered with morning glories, cardinal vines, moon vines, scarlet runner beans and other vining plants as the summer progresses.

Big picnic tables encourage visitors to share the space. There are also bistro tables for more intimate conversations, and big patio umbrellas work their usual magic, rain or shine. The lighting at night is simple, too: Strings of bistro lights twinkle over the garden like stars.

Go ahead and steal a few ideas from these gardens for your own backyard vacation. Then share them in the best way possible: Fire up the grill, fill the cooler full of ice and beverages, invite a few friends over and take the rest of the day off.

SOURCES:

For more information about the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society's annual pop-up gardens, check the organization's website: phsonline.org.