Ah, the promise of spring is in the air as you rake your perenial bed clean and look for signs of life among your garden favorites. Isn’t it wonderful how perennials come back year after year? Indeed they get more robust each year. It’s really rewarding, isn’t it?
Here are some thoughts about choosing which perennials to plant in your garden beds this spring.
Perennials - Brighten Your Garden With Perennial Flowers
Perennials is a term used to describe plants that grow back every year, unlike biennials which flower every two years or annuals which flower once an year and then die. With a bit of effort they can be an ideal way to brighten your garden.
There is a vast variety of perennial plants that come in all shapes, sizes, colors and flowering periods. You only need to decide what to choose and where to plant them.
Your garden can be an array of color if you choose wisely. The biggest advantage is that you need only plant them once and they bloom year after year.
Choice includes ground cover plants, low growing, flowers, shrubs and trees and even ornamental grasses which although they don’t flower they are pleasant to look at. Similarly there are ones with colorful foliage as well as ones for shady or sunny spots.
One of the biggest advantages ground cover perennial flowers is that they cover bare ground, stifle weeds so they can’t grow and will survive where other plants will not.
One of my favorites is Aubretia which has a purple flower and can be used for ground cover or for trailing down over a wall. Other favorites include Hypericum, Red Stonecrop, Yellow Stonecrop, Dianthus, Thymus, and blue or white Campanula.
Asters are low growing plants which flower from June onwards and are ideal for growing at the front of borders as they only reach about 6-8 in and come in different varieties.
For the back of the border there is so much choice. Achillea has golden yellow blooms, reaches 4-5 feet and flowers from July to September.
Asters are a lot shorter at 24-30 in and produce flowers from September onwards.
For earlier flowering choose the huge pink blooms of Incarvillea which reaches a height of 24 in.
Lupins, Delphiniums, Phlox, Gypsophilia, Astilbe and Liatris are all firm favorites.
Amongst the perennial flowering shrubs can be found Euonymus alatus ‘Compactus’ or Compact Burning Bush. This is a dense, rich green shrub of red-burgundy. Forsythia has a profusion of yellow flowers in the spring. It needs to be pruned carefully as it blooms on the previous year’s wood.
Hydrangea, Lilac, Potentilla, Flowering Quince, Roses, Spirea, Viburnam and Witchhazel all come in a variety of sizes and colours. There are far more than these to choose from. A good idea to discover what will grow in your garden is to see what is flowering in the neighborhood or general locality. If a plant grows in one garden in the same area as yours then the soil types are similar and you should also be successful.
You can brighten up your garden with perennial flowers by choosing different sizes, colors and flowering periods. Keep your garden in full bloom with perennial plants that need lower maintenance and care and die down in the winter but grow all over again in the spring.
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Perennials, planting perennials, choosing perenials