In the UK, hardy mums are mothers with great resiliency, but here in Michigan, they’re colorful fall flowers. Mums can be planted as perennials, which will come up year after year, but require a lot of summer maintenance to keep them looking full and bushy. That’s why many people here use them as fall annuals. We plant them in September and October, when summer annuals and perennials have begun to fade and look scraggly. This year I bought a flat of small mums for about $15 that had tightly closed flower buds, and planted them in my window boxes and flower pots. It took awhile for the plants to fill out and grow, but now I have a beautiful riot of colorful mums that look fresh from the greenhouse. Local greenhouses here usually stock mums into late October and early November, in all stages of bloom, so I’ll often buy a couple late in the season and use them indoors for a cheery burst of fall color, or for Thanksgiving decorations, if I can still find good ones that late in the season.
The other hardy mum.
Hardy mums prefer cool temperatures, which is why they thrive long after summer flowers are gone. They will remain alive until there is a hard frost. If planted in the ground, they can be cut back and will come up the next year, but usually never look as good and full as the first year they were planted. Container mums can be thrown in with yard waste compost once done blooming.
Many people pair hardy mums with pansies, another cool weather plant. The 
squirrels in my yard religiously dig up any fall pansies I’ve ever tried plant, so I’ve given up on them, but the mums also look great alone or can be paired with late ferns, perennial sedum, or pumpkins and gourds. Hardy mums come in brilliant colors of yellow, orange, rusty red, maroon red, purple, light yellow and white. I like the yellow, reds and purples best, which make a nice compliment to the fall landscape.
- Brilliant! (© Huffygirl 2011)
© Huffygirl 2011
Huffygirl's Blog 
I love mums. Haven’t had time to pick some up yet, and now that we’ve had our first snow, I’m wondering if I should even bother.
Well you could still use them indoors. I got one of the last ones at my greenhouse this past weekend and put it in a basket on the dining room table. It seems like my greenhouse did not have as many as they usually do – I’ve bought them closer to Thanksgiving before, but this year they were almost gone and the greenhouse is closing at the end of the week. Another sign of the bad economy I guess. Better get one while you still can Margaret.
Lovely. I recently got a great shade of red potted mums to create a “pop” to the front of my house 🙂
The red ones are great. Maybe your’s last longer in the south too. It’s about time for hard frost here, and that will be the end of ours.
It snowed here yesterday, but my pansies are still blooming – we don’t have squirrels, fortunately and the deer don’t seem to want to browse them!
Snow already – so much for global warming. At least your pansies still look good, and the deer aren’t eating them. Thanks for stopping in Margie.
I love the picture of the other hardy mum and the pansies in the pumpkins. Very fun!
Thanks Winsomebella. Maybe other people have hardy mums too.
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