Summer is slipping away, but there's plenty of life left in the garden. As the season changes, the spotlight shines even more brightly on shrubs.

Shrubs are a garden's middle layer: Beneath the tree canopy and above the free-for-all of flower beds, shrubs give the garden most of its structure and texture. They anchor beds in place, define edges and dramatically punctuate the garden's spaces. They add not only substance and character, but color. Shrubs work very hard for us without asking for a lot of pampering -- and they don't fade away, like a summer romance, when the calendar turns to fall.

"Fall is what I started with," says Eva Monheim, whose book, "Shrubs and Hedges," extols the virtues of her favorite plants. Monheim's list of top shrubs naturally includes spring- and summer-flowering choices such as roses, spireas and viburnums, but she's especially interested in the sparkling shrubs of autumn and winter, prized for their flowers, colorful fall foliage, bright berries and graceful structure. These are the shrubs that make a garden interesting all year round, she says.

The best shrubs have something nice to offer in several seasons, Monheim says. One of her favorites is red chokeberry (Aronia), which has white flowers in spring and, in fall, leaves that light up the garden like a bonfire, rivaling the color of maples. It also has beautiful berries. Some chokeberries are tall shrubs, but others will fit in even a tiny garden: A cultivar introduced by Proven Winners, called Low Scape Mound, only grows to about 2 feet tall and wide, "and it's the cutest thing you ever want to see," Monheim says. "It blankets the ground."

Low-growing shrubs have the advantage of being extremely versatile. They're great around the foundations of a house, where they never block the windows, and they fall neatly into line along a walk or around a patio.

Shrubs with bright berries are among the jewels of a fall garden. Aronia's berries can be brilliant red or shiny black, depending on the species. Beautyberry (Callicarpa) shrubs have long, arching stems covered in fall with clusters of rich purple berries that last for weeks. The eye-catching berries of hollies and viburnums show up from a distance but also draw you out into the garden to admire the display up close. And remember, when you grow shrubs with berries, you're not just adding an unexpected pop of color to the fall landscape; you're also planting a rich source of food for birds.

Judson LeCompte, a product development manager for Proven Winners, travels North America and much of the rest of the world looking for great shrubs for gardeners. Growing up in Alabama, he learned to appreciate the pleasure of fall gardens. "It was the only time you could go outside and not die," he says of the southern heat. "Fall is my favorite time of year." Beautyberry is one of his first choices among fall shrubs. "It's a no-nonsense plant," he says. "It does well across the country, it tolerates bad drainage and it thrives in heat."

Re-blooming shrubs may cause you to do a double-take in the fall garden. The Bloomerang series of re-blooming lilacs is particularly striking, with a bright fall flush of fragrant flowers that all but cover the mounded plants. Re-blooming azaleas light up the shade under trees with their flashy ruffled flowers. Shrub roses often put on a fresh and poignant display of fragrant blooms in fall, and the flowers tend to last a little longer in the cooler temperatures than they did in the heat of summer.

There's no need to wait until next year to give your garden a good jolt of color and life with shrubs that shine in the fall. This is a great season to plant, and, as gardening has surged in popularity this year, growers have put their efforts into increasing their inventory. Garden shops are well stocked with excellent choices. Planting now gives shrubs a chance to establish healthy roots in the soil before cold weather comes around. (Water well after planting.) You can expect to enjoy flashy foliage and, on flowering shrubs, fall blooms this year. Berry-producing shrubs are likely to be already loaded with fruit in their nursery pots.

Finding a great place for your new shrub is the easy part. A spot right along the front walk or on the edge of an often-used patio will let you get to know your new plant and will help you remember to water it once a week until the temperatures drop to freezing. Take a look at your flower beds and pick a shrub to fill in a gap or to create a new point of interest between perennials, even as they fade. Make a place for fall-performing shrubs in beds along the foundation of your house or just by the front door, to show your seasonal colors until the holidays at the end of the year grab the focus. After that, your new planting will just get better -- much better -- every year.

SIDEBAR

Great Fall Shrubs

Here are some more favorite fall shrubs recommended by Eva Monheim, author of "Shrubs and Hedges" (Cool Springs Press, $30), and Judson LeCompte, product development manager at Proven Winners (provenwinners.com):

-- Witch hazel: Native witch hazel (Hamamelis virginiana) blooms in midfall. The bright yellow ribbonlike flowers are especially decorative, sparkling amid the foliage as the leaves turn yellow and fall. Hybrid witch hazels are prized for their blazing fall foliage and late-winter blooms.

-- There are viburnums of all kinds and sizes, and many of them produce red or black berries in fall. Many also have spectacular fall foliage displays.

-- Groundsel bush (Baccharis halimifolia) has long-lasting, foamy clusters of creamy-white flowers in midfall.

-- Highbush blueberry (Vaccinium corymbosum) produces the berries you find in grocery stores. This native American shrub makes a showy hedge and has brilliant red-to-orange fall foliage.

-- Oakleaf hydrangea (Hydrangea quercifolia) blooms in summer. The showy flower panicles fade to a tawny brown. In fall, the large leaves turn a bright burgundy. As the leaves fall, they reveal an attractive peeling bark.

-- Virginia sweetspire has bottlebrush white flowers in spring and deep dark red foliage in fall. (Itea virginica Scentlandia is a fragrant variety.)

Gardeners can retreat to a cool spot indoors when the temperature soars. Plants have to stay put. Fortunately, a surprising variety of flowers not only tolerate the heat, but thrive in it. Summertime is their prime time.

To be sure, you can't neglect the care of plants during hot, dry spells, but heat-tolerant plants, whether in flower beds or in big pots, don't need coddling.

"Heat tolerance is a really important trait for us because we all know that consumers don't always know about plant care and watering," says Claire Josephson, product marketing manager for PanAmerican Seed, a plant-breeding company that introduced Wave petunias -- among other top performers -- to the American market. "We are trying to breed bulletproof plants," Josephson says, "and the more risk we can take out, the better."

This year is the 25th anniversary of the Wave series of petunias, known for their nonstop color, spreading habit and versatility in beds and containers. But Wave petunias are only one example of flowers that bloom happily through the steamy days of summer. Pentas, salvias, dianthus, impatiens, vinca, begonias and many others keep the garden looking lively in temperatures that can cause people to melt. While you move to a shady spot on the patio or enjoy your view of the garden from a window, bright summer flowers keep producing fresh blooms in the hottest sun, and butterflies float in on warm summer breezes to visit them, too.

"What's exciting to me is there are more heat-tolerant flowers all the time," says Justin Hancock, horticultural craftsman at the plant brand Monrovia, and a big fan of summer flower color. "You get certain types of color in the summer that you just don't see in spring," he says. Angelonia is one of Hancock's absolute favorites, for its deep colors, spikey form and fragrant flowers. "They smell like sugar cookies," he says.

Breeders are often looking over their shoulders when they work to solve gardeners' problems -- they find inspiration and opportunity in well-known and beloved plants of the past that just need a modern touch of color and a shot of vigor to appeal to new gardeners. The Lucky Star series of pentas is an example. Lucky Star is relatively new, and Josephson is excited about it for its continuous blooming habit, great colors, compact size and pollinator-friendly flowers. Each flower head is made up of hundreds of small blooms. Pentas make a big impression from a distance, and the many tiny flowers are also charming up close. Previous generations of pentas bloomed in cycles. With these plants, "you're never without color," Josephson says.

Old-fashioned vincas are back in style these days, too, Josephson says, in part thanks to PanAm's Tattoo series, which introduced a bold palette emphasizing fruit colors (tangerine, papaya, raspberry, black cherry). They have caught on with young gardeners and are now among the company's top sellers, she says.

Putting together great combinations of long-blooming plants is a specialty of the plant brand Proven Winners, which shares inspiration with gardeners in annual idea books featuring landscape ideas and combos for pots and hanging baskets. For consistent summer color when the weather is sizzling hot, lantanas are hard to beat, and Proven Winners combinations make the most of these tough plants. Verbenas, which start blooming in late spring and keep going through summer and into fall, are also easy, hard-working stars of container or flower-bed plantings, and favorites of PW designers. Verbenas and lantanas are both terrific butterfly plants.

Colorful foliage plants have a lot to contribute to summer gardens, too, says Penny Merritt-Price, research coordinator at Young's Plant Farm, a wholesale nursery in Auburn, Alabama. The plant farm maintains an All-America Selections test garden, and Merritt-Price is a judge, rating the performance of hundreds of plants every year, comparing new introductions and recommending top plants for AAS awards.

"Coleus are awesome," she says, and she's right: They're colorful, tough and versatile, and they don't need flowers to make a garden sparkle. "They really lighten up a space in the shade -- and they're great in blazing sun, too," Merritt-Price says. Breeders have introduced dozens of coleus varieties, dwarf and tall coleus, with interesting foliage shapes and intense colors from deep red to chartreuse.

Merritt-Price also likes sweet-potato vines as ground-cover or accent foliage plants. Her favorites are the compact Sweet Georgia Heart series and the Spotlight series of vines. Previous generations of sweet-potato vines were fast-growing plants that were inclined to take over a flower bed, flowerpot, or hanging basket. New varieties look lush and luxurious, but they're well-behaved companions and will not run rampant through your carefully designed planting combinations.

It's never too late in the season to pump up the color in your flower beds or pots with new plants, especially when there are so many great choices. Garden shops and the garden departments of big-box stores are committed to keeping their inventories up this summer, to meet increased demand as families spend more time at home. Hot-weather plants available now will have your garden soaring through the rest of the gardening season: They're hotter than a heat wave.

THE BASICS

-- You don't need advanced gardening skills to take care of summer flowers.

-- Encourage full-time bloom with a little fertilizer. Sprinkle slow-release fertilizer in flowerpots or around annuals in flower beds, or use with a water-soluble fertilizer every two weeks.

-- Water regularly. Poke a finger into the soil around your plants. If it feels dry, it's time to water.

SOURCES

Get to know new plants on the websites of breeders and propagators.

-- PanAm's breeders have introduced an astonishing variety of seed-grown bedding plants. panamseed.com

-- Monrovia's designers call annual flowers "the eye candy of the summer garden." monrovia.com

-- The Proven Winners brand emphasizes tough, beautiful plants, with plenty of offerings for hot-season heroes. Their newsletter and idea book are especially inspiring. provenwinners.com

-- All-America Selections works with breeders to test and promote new flowers and vegetable varieties. Many gardens in the AAS network of almost 200 test gardens across the country are open to the public. You can find a test garden and learn more about AAS winners, which have been recognized since 1932. all-americaselections.org

There's a big difference between a well-designed garden and a garden that sparkles -- and it's in the details. Getting things in just the right place and taking advantage of opportunities are what bring a garden design to life.

Good designers "have a sense of scale and proportion and circulation," says James Drzewiecki, a landscape designer and owner of Ginkgo Leaf Studio in Cedarburg, Wisconsin. "And when you have good details, even if they are subtle, people pick up on that."

Drzewiecki never has to look far for inspiration in the gardens he designs. "I look at the house first," he says, picking up visual cues that suggest the ideal location for beds and pathways. The choice of materials for hardscaping in a garden design often echoes the materials in a house, he says, and gives the garden a feeling of belonging in the place.

In an award-winning garden near Milwaukee, Drzewiecki reimagined a client's front yard, adding functional and artful details designed to make the space more modern and welcoming. Bluestone pavers set in slate-chip mulch, placed adjacent to the driveway, give passengers a comfortable place to step in and out of a car without stepping in flower beds. Along the front walk, a pad of irregularly shaped field stones reflects the home's Prairie-style architecture and creates what Drzewiecki calls "a pausing point" in the landscape. It's a skillful touch: Instead of coming in on a runway of a front walk, visitors immediately find themselves in the midst of a gracious garden landscape.

Wickie Rowland, a landscape designer and creative director at Design and Landscapes by Labrie Associates in North Hampton, New Hampshire, relies on design details to create movement in a garden.

Rowland designed a sweeping stone walkway with a generously proportioned curved seating wall on the waterfront of a client's property, an expansive gesture that pulls the eye into the landscape. Behind the wall, her design called for a row of wispy plantings, just enough to soften and highlight the edge without blocking the view. A fancy garden gate, which borrows architectural details from the home, marks an entrance but also keeps deer out of the vegetable beds on the other side.

In another garden, Rowland used an unexpected combination of boulders, pea gravel and field stones in her design of the hardscape, but limited the color palette to warm brown tones. Even though the materials are texturally very different from one another, the color choice "marries it all together, so it makes sense," she says.

Details strongly reinforce design decisions, Rowland says, describing the great care an installation crew took to place clipped boxwood globes around a client's perfectly symmetrical rose garden. "The pathways had to line up just so, and the boxwoods all needed to be the same distance from the edging," she says. "You may not notice consciously when the smaller details have been paid attention to, but there's a sense of extra pleasure in seeing a project like that."

In small projects, details are particularly important, says Ryan Prange, a landscape architect and the founder of Falling Waters Landscape in Encinitas, in Southern California, where small lots are typical. They have their own challenges, Prange says. In tiny spaces, design elements frequently have to do double duty, solving problems (and hiding them) while giving clients beautiful spaces for the outdoor lifestyle they're dreaming of.

On a tiny lot just north of Encinitas, Prange met with a client who needed a solution to periodic flooding but also wanted a home office off the deck, a place to entertain, and privacy from the street. Water problems had to be addressed first. "We talked about everything -- from lifting the house to rebuilding," Prange says. In the end, they excavated, creating swales and depressions in the landscape and lining them with rocks and water-tolerant plants. A company that specializes in water systems contributed valuable technical expertise, but Prange's design details, including a recirculating fountain that seems to spill into one of the swales, and a footbridge over a catchment area inspired by the experience of a similar bridge in Yosemite Valley, set the project apart.

"Sometimes a problem can be hidden with a pot or a plant, but there are also times when I say, 'This is going to be a neat moment' -- and everything needs to work together," Prange says. "It all matters a lot to me."

Great garden designs respond to site and situation, solve problems, and manage to make it all look beautiful, inviting and natural. It may look effortless, but the details are hard at work everywhere you look.

SOURCES

The website of the Association of Professional Landscape Designers (apld.org) is a great place to look for examples of award-winning garden designs, and to find a designer in your area.

These designers are among many APLD members whose work has been recognized with APLD design awards:

-- James Drzewiecki, Ginkgo Leaf Studio, ginkgoleafstudio.net.

-- Wickie Rowland, Design and Landscapes by Labrie Associates, labrieassociates.com.

-- Ryan Prange, Falling Waters Landscape, fallingwaterslandscape.com