THE LONG GAME

Fall is lasting longer. The average length of the growing season in the Lower 48 has increased by nearly 2 weeks since the beginning of the 20th Century, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, with a particularly large and steady increase over the past 30 years.

For gardeners in temperate zones, this offers new opportunities. With careful planning, we can now enjoy a long-lasting fall garden as glorious as a spring or summer one.

The longer fall has been especially dramatic in my Vermont garden. Some years I can decorate the Thanksgiving table with Russian sage, roses and anemones, if I protect the plants from what is usually just a one-night frost. In the past, frost came repeatedly well before Thanksgiving.

“Absolutely, fall is longer, stretching into early December,” confirms Gordon Hayward, a nationally recognized garden writer and lecturer who also wrote for this magazine for 25 years. In the 1.5-acre garden that he and his wife, Mary, have created, fall gets equal