Fall and Halloween Landscape Ideas

By Melinda Myers - horticulturist and gardening expert
October 3, 2026

Cooler weather means many of our balconies, front steps, and gardens will be filled with fall favorites. Create the look that best suits you by selecting the suitable plants and fall décor.

Halloween-Inspired Fall Displays

If it is a dark and moody Goth-inspired display, garden, or landscape you desire, there are lots of plants to help create the scene. Bewitched Begonia, Obsidian coral bells, and Black Olive pepper are a few plants with darker foliage perfect for such a display. Add plants with nearly black or red flowers and fruit like Black Velvet petunia, Black Pearl pepper, Dragon’s Breath celosia, and Redbor kale. Add some silver foliage plants to reflect light and add pops of green, adding energy to the display. Include some spiky plants and grasses for a bit of vertical interest.

Create a more permanent Goth landscape using perennials, trees, and shrubs with a dark, moody feel. Popping in a few perennials may be the easiest place to start. Consider creating a Goth space within an existing garden by planting purple-leaved coral bells, Dark Side of the Moon astilbe, Sunsparkler Plum Dazzled stonecrop, and Purple Fountain grass. Where space allows, include shrubs like Winecraft Black smokebush, Kodiak Black Diervilla, Midnight Moxie Fringe Flower, and red roses. As always, make sure the plants you select are hardy in your area, suited to the growing conditions, and will fit the space once mature.

Finish off the display or your spooky landscape with some weathered vintage items like an old candelabra, black raven figurine or weathered wood. Leave a few faded flowers and seedheads on plants and leaves on the ground below. Fall leaves not only help create the mood; they serve as a mulch, conserving soil moisture, insulating plant roots, suppressing weeds, and improving the soil as they decompose. They also provide habitat for many beneficial insects. And don’t tidy up the garden after the first frost. Leave dried stems of healthy annual and perennial plants standing in the garden. You’ll add to the ambiance, and many of the standing stems provide winter homes for beneficial insects, and the seeds feed songbirds throughout the winter.

Perhaps you are just looking for more of a spooky outdoor landscape for Halloween. Goth-inspired plants are a great place to start. Add some pumpkins with scary faces, bat silhouettes, spider webs, and bones peeking out from under plants.

Festive Fall Landscaping

Nothing creates the look and feel of fall like pumpkins, mums, cornstalks, and bales of straw. Adding a few pumpkins and pots of mums and asters to your front step, balcony, or deck is an easy way to add a fresh fall look. Consider changing things up a bit this fall by using and displaying pumpkins in a bit different way.

Include pumpkins in your landscape. Edge garden beds with a row of pumpkins. The orange looks great with the purples and golds of fall flowers and foliage.

Set pumpkins, gourds, and ornamental squash in garden beds. It is a great way to cover fading annuals and failed plantings. It will look like a well-planned fall display, not a garden idea gone bad.

Do the same in existing containers. A few small pumpkins or gourds add a feel of fall to existing planters. Or include them in newly planted fall containers filled with ornamental kale, Rudbeckias, grasses, and pansies.

Consider stacking pumpkins and squash for a bit different look. You’ll be able to add more in a small space and create vertical interest in garden beds, patio display and entryways. Or stack baskets, pots, and colanders, filling each layer with pumpkins and gourds. Sprinkle in some colorful fall leaves to complete the display.

Change things up a bit by converting a few pumpkins into fall planters. Remove the top cutting a hole large enough to accommodate the pot you’ll be inserting. Remove the seeds and flesh, cut a few drainage holes in the bottom then set a pot of pansies, asters, mums or ornamental peppers inside. 

Carve an opening in the side of your pumpkin and scoop out the insides. Create a fall or Halloween display or gnome home. Use faux moss, figurines and your imagination to design the scene.

When your pumpkins start to rot, move them to the compost pile. They will break down into a wonderful soil amendment to use in next year’s garden.

A Few Fall Flowers to Include

As you create your festive fall display, garden, or landscape, select flowers that thrive in the cooler fall temperatures. Mums, asters, ornamental kale, and pansies are always a favorite. Use them to fill voids in garden beds and containers or create new plantings. Combine them with something different this fall for a fresh new look.

If you are gardening in the north, plant a few hardy pansies along with spring flowering bulbs in fall. You’ll enjoy their blooms this fall and in spring as temperatures warm their blossoms will brighten your garden. Once the bulbs sprout and grow the combination provides layers of colors in the spring garden. If you’re gardening in milder climates, enjoy pansies, sweet alyssum, and other cool-season annuals from fall until temperatures begin to soar the following year.

Nemesias are another cool-weather annual worth including in fall gardens and containers. You’ll find a variety of colors including white, yellow, pink, mauve, and orange, perfect for a fall display. Grow them in full sun or a bit of afternoon shade for relief from the heat.

Osteospermum, also known as African daisies, thrive in the cooler fall weather. Look for these daisy-shaped flowers in coppery blends, yellow, and purple to help create your fall display.

Strawflowers are another often overlooked plant that is making a comeback and perfect for the fall. Their unique blossoms look and feel dry to the touch, inspiring their common name. Set a pot of colorful strawflowers among your pumpkins, ornamental squash, and other fall décor. Combine them in containers and garden beds with other fall favorites like ornamental kale and cabbage, grasses, ornamental peppers, pansies, calibrachoas, and more.

Welcome family and guests with a basket or container of dried plant material collected from your landscape. Collect a few flowering stems of ornamental grasses, colorful berries, dried flowers, and seedpods from your gardens. Include some interesting twists to the arrangement with corkscrew willow, Harry Lauders Walking stick or grape vines. Anything that looks good in the garden will add to your arrangement’s beauty.

Create your arrangement in a hanging basket, decorative pot, or planter made from a repurposed item, adding drainage holes as needed. Place chicken wire at the bottom and crisscrossed wires over the top of the container to form a secure base for the arrangement. Add a few rocks in the bottom of pots set on the ground as a counterweight when needed. And avoid windy locations that may topple or destroy your creation

Add some permanent fall color to garden beds with fall-flowering perennials. Nonaggressive goldenrods like North American native showy goldenrod (Solidago speciosa) and blue-stemmed goldenrod (Solidago caesia) and the cultivar Fireworks add welcome color to the fall landscape. They provide needed pollen and nectar for late-season pollinators and do not cause hay fever. Combine goldenrod with fall asters, mums, and ornamental grasses for an attractive fall display.

Include a few native grasses like prairie dropseed (Sporobolus heterolepis), side-oats grama (Bouteloua curtipendula) and little bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium) that add texture and motion to the garden. You’ll enjoy the foliage all summer long, late-season blooms, and added winter interest.

Plant toad lilies (Tricyrtis spp) at the edge of a shade garden or pathway where their unique flowers can be enjoyed. They combine nicely with ferns, hostas, astilbes and hellebores that also thrive in moist shady locations.

Another pretty alternative providing unexpected beauty in the fall garden is the Japanese anemone. Its flowers appear in late summer or fall above the attractive foliage. It thrives in moist, rich soil in full sun with some afternoon shade in hotter locations. You’ll enjoy weeks of these flowers as the fall season comes to an end.

Whatever your design style, adding something new for fall is a great way to celebrate the change of seasons.