Plan your flower garden around perennials!
Perennial plants reward us with an appearance year after year while their cousins, the annuals, make a one-time show and then they're goners. For your home landscape, the perennial is a winner, with its wide range of size, flower and foliage.
Planning for perennials in the garden is well worth the time, since you'll enjoy the plants for years. That doesn't mean you can't correct poor placement. That's another thing about these plants: Most of them are easy to move and many keep spreading and even need thinning every few years.
Gardens can be designed to combine "islands" of perennials with gaps to accommodate different annuals each year for contrast. Perennial plantings can also be established in back corners or in shady areas as long-range "leave alone" plots.
Listed below are some of these plants suitable for our area. Many can be started from seed indoors right now, or later from bedding plants ready to go in the garden. Some of them, like iris and peonies, can be purchased as roots or clumps ready to go.
• Delphinium: Likes sun and good drainage and stands tall at the back of other plantings. Some varieties are so tall (4-6 feet) they need to be staked. Flowers in late July. If promptly removed as they fade, there's a chance of a second flush of similar, smaller blooms. Colors range from white to pink to royal blue.
• Viola: At the other end of the size scale are the old favorites, also known as Johnny-jump-ups. Violas are smaller than pansies and will keep blooming if old flowers are picked off through early spring and in the fall. They serve as ground cover, edgings or as eye-catchers in rock gardens. They thrive in the moist, shadowy backs of patios.
• Iris: The range of this strong, easy- to-grow wonder is enormous. Huge Japanese types sport exotic blooms of dinner-plate size in June and July. The smallest mature at only 4 inches in height and pop out in May. The common variety for our area is the bearded iris, with a color range from white and gold to sky blue, purple and burgundy.
• Herbs: Tucked into your perennial garden may be numbers of plants you can eat. Chives offer pleasant, spike- like, mild onion-flavored leaves and balls of lavender blooms. Sage provides blue-flowering stems and silver gray fuzzy leaves. Sage can be dried for fresh fragrance in poultry dressing or a sprinkling on breakfast eggs. Peppermint, pineapple and a dozen other scented types of mint can join lemon balm for a fragrant garden. Be careful, as the mints and balms will spread. Each variety can be held to a container.
• Peonies: Big blooms with a fantastic color range. Once you've seen these golf ball-sized buds burst, it's impossible not to have them in your garden.
• Phlox: Colors like magenta, lavender and white are but a few of the choices for this great flower, which sports dozens of blooms in a grapefruit-sized blossom ball. Don't crowd them or powdery mildew will be an annual visitor.
Other great choices include bee balm, coneflowers, blue Veronica, coralbells, lupines and daylilies. Plan color combinations, height placement and range of bloom before going wild at the bedding plant displays this spring. Check catalogs for pictures or go to online nurseries like
Visit Flowers and Garden.com for more flower gardening related information.
Planning for perennials in the garden is well worth the time, since you'll enjoy the plants for years. That doesn't mean you can't correct poor placement. That's another thing about these plants: Most of them are easy to move and many keep spreading and even need thinning every few years.
Gardens can be designed to combine "islands" of perennials with gaps to accommodate different annuals each year for contrast. Perennial plantings can also be established in back corners or in shady areas as long-range "leave alone" plots.
Listed below are some of these plants suitable for our area. Many can be started from seed indoors right now, or later from bedding plants ready to go in the garden. Some of them, like iris and peonies, can be purchased as roots or clumps ready to go.
• Delphinium: Likes sun and good drainage and stands tall at the back of other plantings. Some varieties are so tall (4-6 feet) they need to be staked. Flowers in late July. If promptly removed as they fade, there's a chance of a second flush of similar, smaller blooms. Colors range from white to pink to royal blue.
• Viola: At the other end of the size scale are the old favorites, also known as Johnny-jump-ups. Violas are smaller than pansies and will keep blooming if old flowers are picked off through early spring and in the fall. They serve as ground cover, edgings or as eye-catchers in rock gardens. They thrive in the moist, shadowy backs of patios.
• Iris: The range of this strong, easy- to-grow wonder is enormous. Huge Japanese types sport exotic blooms of dinner-plate size in June and July. The smallest mature at only 4 inches in height and pop out in May. The common variety for our area is the bearded iris, with a color range from white and gold to sky blue, purple and burgundy.
• Herbs: Tucked into your perennial garden may be numbers of plants you can eat. Chives offer pleasant, spike- like, mild onion-flavored leaves and balls of lavender blooms. Sage provides blue-flowering stems and silver gray fuzzy leaves. Sage can be dried for fresh fragrance in poultry dressing or a sprinkling on breakfast eggs. Peppermint, pineapple and a dozen other scented types of mint can join lemon balm for a fragrant garden. Be careful, as the mints and balms will spread. Each variety can be held to a container.
• Peonies: Big blooms with a fantastic color range. Once you've seen these golf ball-sized buds burst, it's impossible not to have them in your garden.
• Phlox: Colors like magenta, lavender and white are but a few of the choices for this great flower, which sports dozens of blooms in a grapefruit-sized blossom ball. Don't crowd them or powdery mildew will be an annual visitor.
Other great choices include bee balm, coneflowers, blue Veronica, coralbells, lupines and daylilies. Plan color combinations, height placement and range of bloom before going wild at the bedding plant displays this spring. Check catalogs for pictures or go to online nurseries like
Visit Flowers and Garden.com for more flower gardening related information.
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Tuesday, March 22, 2005
