Your garden can be an invigorating profusion of color that replenishes your energy or a haven of serenity and peace. A few minutes in a backyard oasis can help calm your mind, forget your problems or gather your nerve. Your plantings can convey a sense of joy, solemnity or playfulness. As a gardener, you can create that retreat.

At the sixth Fall Garden Workshop, Penn State Extension Master Gardeners of Butler County will present tips to help you make your garden vision a reality.

The workshop is scheduled from 8:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sept. 28 at the Unionville Fire Hall, just off Route 8 north of Butler. Presenters will focus on helping you create a garden that will delight your senses beginning early in the spring.

Colors, along with their relationship to other hues and your plantings, are first on the agenda in “Color in Your Garden.” The use of color is one of the gardener’s most versatile tools in creating a mood or making a strong statement.

Melsina Petrak, Pennsylvania Certified Horticulturist and owner/operator of Melsina’s Fine Gardening, will share her enthusiasm for the language of color in flower gardening. You’ll learn about balanced design, whether your creation is a crystal vase, a lily pond or your dream landscape.

Petrak will include herbaceous plants — annuals, perennials, bulbs, herbs — in her discussion of satisfying the senses with garden color.

In the second presentation, the focus will be those magic moments of spring when we are rewarded with flowers without work — because we planted the bulbs last fall.

Gordon Vujevic, a gardening expert, will discuss both traditional favorites like tulips and snowdrops and less common varieties like Fritellaria in Spring-Flowering Bulbs. Discover how easy it is to add excitement to your spring landscape and how to care for your plants.

Now retired from teaching music and singing, Vujevic continues to indulge a passion for cultivating plants that began when he was 6 years old. He enjoys nothing more than sharing what he has learned.

What’s a garden without a few pests? A wonderful treat, that’s what.

Third on the agenda is Karen Beachem, Master Gardener from Butler County, who will share Integrated Pest Management (IPM) strategies.

The goal of IPM is to make your garden inhospitable for damaging pests. Learn the steps involved in landscaping and gardening that will discourage pests from taking up residence and discover the least toxic methods of dealing with those pests if they do find your plants.

Beachem has 30 years experience growing vegetables using IPM principles and has recently turned her attention to applying those techniques in flower gardening. She enjoys growing dahlias and also nurtures a wide variety of perennials, annuals, and shrubs on her wooded property.

Returning from lunch, we’ll explore the importance of choosing well when creating outdoor living space in Top Plant Choices for the Landscape. Dave Dannaher, owner/operator of Dannaher Landscaping for more than 35 years, will focus on selections that will thrive in your landscape.

Dannaher is recognized as an expert in the propagation of rare and unusual plants and has worked with and provided plant materials to horticulture authors Debra Knapke and Tracy DiSabato-Aust.

He will share what he has learned to help you choose selections that will add beauty to the landscape and that you can plant with confidence, knowing they will flourish with minimal maintenance.

Rounding out the day’s presentations, gardening expert and author Jessica Walliser will explain how to create a quiet space of peace and relaxation in “Evening Garden.”

She will discuss the right mix of light-colored flowers with evening fragrance, pale foliage and the sound of running water to make a retreat from the stresses of the day. Learn which plants make the best evening companions and how to design your own twilight refuge.

Walliser co-hosts “The Organic Gardeners” radio show and writes for Organic Magazine. Her credentials include a degree in ornamental horticulture from Penn State, operating a 25 acre organic market farm, 20 years teaching at Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens and two published organic gardening books.

There will be plants, bulbs and other items for sale during the lunch break and after the final session. The $30 registration fee includes breakfast and lunch. Parking is free.

Call 724-287-4761 for additional information and registration forms from the Penn State Extension Office. You will find more information about the topics and speakers and can download a registration form at http://extension.psu.edu/butler/events/fall-garden-workshop. The registration deadline for the workshop is Friday.

Susan Struthers is a Penn State Extension Butler County Master Gardeners.