Colorful annuals and vibrant green herbs create a warm welcome in a fall garden. When summer blooms begin to die down, fall-blooming annuals and perennials kick in to create a garden filled with color and texture. With chilly weather in the air, there are still herbs to grow during the cool season and harvest for your favorite meals. To ensure a brilliant fall garden, mix colorful flowers together with bright bursts of green herbs. Single green colors of herbs against the rainbow of fall blooms creates the perfect balance to the landscape.

Herbs

Herbs create a colorful contrast to a fall garden.The bright green foliage and interesting textures of fennel and parsley look lovely against the landscape and are ideal cool weather herbs to grow in the garden. Grow parsley and fennel in the back of a bed to add height to the space. Some of the first herbs to spring up during fall are chives. Chives add a bright shot of vibrant green to the landscape. Chives grow in small mounds and look lovely in an outdoor container or a perennial garden. Another fall herb to plant is winter savory. Winter savory is dark green and densely leafed. It has a strong peppery taste and is easy to grow as an accent to a plant border. Salad burnet, another fall herb, has a spicy cucumber flavor and is ideal added to salads or sprinkled over fresh fruit. This mound-like herb has soft leaves that produce berrylike flowers as they mature.

Annuals

Annuals are a fall staple for any gardener. Cool-season annuals are the easiest annuals to grow and add bright colors to a fall garden. For small annuals blooms, plant pansies. Small pansies, also called Johnny-jump-ups, look lovely tucked into the front of a fall flower bed or in a fall container. These pansy-like blooms are delicate with their small, multicolored petals. Snapdragons are another annual flower to plant in the fall for color and texture. These upright flowers have grape-like blooms in orange, red, pink, yellow, white and lavender. Snapdragons grow up to 36 inches in height and look lovely as the backdrop to a fall garden.

Perennials

Fall-blooming perennials ensure you have color during the cool months. The aster is a fall perennial must. It comes in shades of blue, pink, purple and white. The daisy-like blossoms begin emerging in late summer and last through the first frost. Asters are also low-growing perennials that creep around the landscape and look lovely cascading over a rock garden or small garden wall. Another perennial fall-loving flower is the chrysanthemum. Chrysanthemums are hardy perennials that come in a range of colors to plant in containers or along a front flower bed for bright bursts of color. Another brilliant fall perennial is sedum "Autumn Joy," which blooms mauve.