Perennial Plants

Perennial plants are wonderful. They come back year after year, with little assistance from anyone. Once established, they normally thrive and multiply. It may be necessary to divide them every few years. Perennial plants come back in every form, size, and color. They also bloom at different times of the growing season, which allows for the plants to bloom from the earliest days of spring till late fall.

When you design a perennial bed, opt for taller plants for the back or middle of the garden, and smaller ones toward the outsie.  Early spring perennials such as daffodils, tulips, hyacinths, and crocus, can be planted all over the bed, since they will be up and blooming before the other perennial plants. Day lilies, traditional garden phlox, varieties of daisies, Echinacea, or purple cone flower, are taller perennials that need to be within the rear.

Generally speaking, perennials like rich well drained soil. They are not very picky about extreme climatic conditions, and most of the early selections can grow all the way through a late spring snowfall. They might be hardy plants, but they need water in dry periods, and an application of fertilizer a couple of times throughout the blooming season is recommended. Planting and dividing perennial plants is not difficult.

In the first spring when they first appear through the soil, or once they're done blooming, they can be dug up and transplanted. Once you have dug up a few, you'll be in a position to see the best way to divide the roots or bulbs. In the autumn, it is a sensible plan to cut down old growth, since it not onlylooks bad throughout the winter, it obstructs the new growth in the spring and becomes a lot more difficult to cut when new growth is coming back through.

You can apply some mulch to your perennial bed, but, if you forget, most perennial plants will reappear the following year with not much protection. The best thing about perennial plants is that they reappear, and give you something to look forward too after a protracted, cold winterPerennial plants thrive within the cool, wet early spring, thus they grow quickly and abundantly in temperatures where annuals would not survive.

Perennial plants have a history of being “friendship plants.” Find someone who has a variety that you do not and trade with them. This is the most effective and least expensive approach to enlarge your garden.