Newsletter Articles
Dark Colored Plants for Halloween and October
Written by Kelsey W.
We associate different colors with different seasons, and dark, spooky colors like black and purple are quite common in October. One of the most unexpected ways to decorate for October and the spooky season is decorating with dark-colored plants that match beautifully with Halloween jack-o-lanterns and decorations for the Day of the Dead.
Did you know that there are actually some plants that come by their dark colors naturally? Sure, you can take a can of spray paint to your roses to create a spooky black and purple bouquet, but there are actually all sorts of dark-colored flowers for your home and garden that don’t require any artificial coloring.
As you switch your décor from summer to fall, consider some of the following options when it comes to choosing your spooky Halloween décor, gifts, and celebrations.
Grow Some Black Bats Around Your Home
Spooky bats are an iconic part of décor for Halloween, as well as a common feature of spooky movies and anything scary. Although bats are actually kind of cute when you see them without all the spookiness attached, they’ll probably always remain part of the lore and décor of fall and October.
If you’d like to welcome some bats to your home that won’t fly around at night and give you a fright, consider the black bat flower or “Tacca chantrieri” plant. This perennial isn’t the best at surviving the direct sunlight of a Southern California summer, but they do well inside as houseplants.
If you have an area of your lawn that’s shaded for much of the day, or you have a wall where the direct sunlight doesn’t hit (especially in the summer), you can put these plants outside, but just make sure to keep a close eye on them whenever the temperature heats up.
The best part is that these plants typically flower in the late summer and throughout the fall, which makes them ideal bloomers for October and the holidays. The plant looks quite exotic and complex, and the flower is meant to resemble a bat in flight when it blooms.
Shape the Autumn With Stalks of Black Calla Lilies
In some parts of the United States, calla lilies are actually considered a nuisance, and they tend to spread like wildfire along the highways and byways of the deep south. However, their beautiful blooms and big, luscious leaves make up for the fact that they can get a little out of control.
You probably won’t have this issue, even if you plant them in a box or planter at your Southern California home, as they’re easy to control when you put them in a container. Like the black bat flowers, your calla lilies will bloom in the late summer and fall, setting them up beautifully for a Halloween display.
Calla lilies come in all sorts of colors, but for your spooky display, you’ll want to choose black calla lilies. If you have a particularly bright window, you can place your lilies in a container and grow them inside, but they also fare beautifully on a porch, greeting your visitors with big black blooms.
Calla lilies can live up to ten years, so this means you can start growing them this year and have them blooming every year when October rolls around. If you want to make things extra Halloween-y, try adding orange calla lilies to the mix for a beautiful October display.
Dark Cosmos are Beautiful in All Seasons
Growing black flowers makes quite a statement, but what if you want to plant flowers that are darkly colored but you’re a little hesitant to go full on black with the color? You might choose to plant cosmos, which is a perennial that should start blooming in the summer and keep producing blooms right into the autumn.
Cosmos comes in a variety of colors, but you’ll want to search for the chocolate color or “Cosmos atrosanguineus,” which should tolerate growing just about anywhere outside your home, whether that’s in a bed, a basket, or a pot.
Since the chocolate cosmos produces a brown flower, you can grow it all year round without it, making your Fourth of July celebration look oddly spooky in the summer. You can enhance the October feel and the dark flowers of the cosmos plant by pairing it with some spooky decorations like little decorative spiders, grave headstones, or spooky skeletons.
The cosmos flower kind of looks like a daisy, and you can cut the blooms and bring them inside for a display in your home for a holiday party or spooky gathering. They do like a lot of sunlight though, so it’s best to keep them outdoors for most of the season unless you’re cutting them for spooky flower arrangements.
Using the Classic Black Dahlia for Your October Décor
If you’re aiming to display a truly classic darkly colored flower that has a mysterious history attached to its name, you might choose the dahlia for your October flower arrangement. Black dahlias are pretty rare, and they’re not even actually black.
The rare varieties of darkly colored dahlias are generally seen in dark red, deep purple, or some sort of maroon color. Usually, the deep purple is the closest you’ll get to a black dahlia, but you can pair it with other darkly colored dahlias for a really stunning display.
Dahlias kind of resemble roses that have opened all the way, and it’s easy to mistake them as being a type of rose. If you want to enjoy your dark dahlias all year, you can definitely put them into the ground outside in Southern California, and they should grow back every year as long as the temperatures don’t freeze for an extended period (unlikely for most of SoCal unless you’re in the mountains).
Make sure the soil where you plant the dahlias is well draining though because the flowers won’t survive remaining soggy for any length of time, particularly in the winter when we tend to get most of the rain in Southern California. If you’re worried about soggy dahlias, try putting them in a container you can move or ensue is always drained properly.
What About Black Irises and Other Spring Flowers?
Irises produce all sorts of brightly colored blooms, but not all irises are bright and bubbly. There is an iris known as “Black is Black,” which produces true black blooms. Unfortunately, the problem with trying to display black irises during October is that irises are spring flowers and aren’t known for flowering during the fall when you most want them on display.
The same is true for darkly colored tulips, which you can get in an ultra-dark burgundy color. These “Queen of the Night” tulips are a gorgeous dark color, but they traditionally bloom in the late spring, which means trying to showcase their blooms in October is a touch difficult.
Another flower that is available in black but isn’t always guaranteed to bloom in October is the black petunia. The best way to encourage blooms that last late into the fall season is to deadhead regularly, meaning you should clip the flowers off quickly after they fade. Petunias are quite happy under the summer sun in California, but it can take a little extra luck and attention to ensure they bloom all the way into the fall.
You can also consider black pansies for your fall display, as they do bloom in the fall. Sure, they’re considered an early spring flower, especially in northern climes, but they do actually bloom in the fall, too. The cool thing about pansies is that they’re ridiculously easy to grow, so you can toss them in a flower bed and fertilize them occasionally for lovely dark-colored fall blooms.
Get Spooky Plants & Flowers at Green Thumb Nursery
It’s fall, so that means it’s time to take your home’s garden from bright and sunny to dark and spooky. Enhance your home’s spooky décor with some hauntingly beautiful plants from Green Thumb Nursery. Let our plant experts help you create a beautiful look for your haunted home, workplace, or anywhere you’d like to place some spooky new plant friends for the season.
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