Garden Perennials Provide a Riot of Color

Garden perennials are popular with many gardeners, though there is a danger that the new gardener will over-plant them as they wait for those already planted to mature. The secret with perennials is patience, and if you want something to add color to your garden while you wait, then plant some annuals for the first year until the perennials really show their true colors. A perennial needs at least a year before it flowers properly and that is when some gardeners get impatient. In year two, although you get some show of flowers, you will still not be impressed and might start to wonder why you chose perennials.

That feeling totally changes, however, with the explosion of color in year three. That is when you will start to regret the extra plants you put in because the first ones did not seem to be doing anything. Once your perennials are established it will seem very easy just to sit back and admire your work, but you will have no time for that. Perennials do not last for ever, and the definition of the term is one that lasts for more than two years. As some die away you will have to remove and replace them with fresh plants. You can even move them about the garden since perennials are ideal for replanting.

In fact many gardeners have a space set aside for starting off new garden perennials in a variety of colors that they can use later for filling in gaps as plants die. This avoids them having to wait until the plants mature. It is not easy to fill an empty space in a row of flowers if you have to wait two or three years for a plant to flower, and a small personal nursery area is a good idea and quite common with gardeners experienced in growing perennials.

Others fill spaces with annuals, but they never quite look as though they belong. Growing perennials takes experience. Perhaps not so much the growing, but the planning and envisaging what your garden will look like in three years time. It is not easy to space your plants correctly since they will spread out a great deal more than you think as they mature, and some such as asters, can continue to bloom when others have died out. The overall plan of a garden should take several aspects of the plant into consideration, such as height, spread, color, whether it prefers shade or direct sunlight, and how long they flower for. As mentioned, the aster can bloom past September into the fall, and you don’t want to plant asters together with summer blooms that die off in August.

You will then be left with some asters all on their own and, while asters are lovely plants, it might not be as you planned it. Perennials can bloom right through from April to November, sometimes even later depending on the climate and the weather conditions. Let's face it, there are more to perennials than most people think, and they include plants as diverse as rhubarb, daffodils, and other bulbs, corms and rhizomes, lilac and even dandelions and daisies.

You also have the soft, fleshy stemmed herbaceous perennials such as the peony. These have fragrant flowers, the smell of which varies between varieties and come in reds, pinks and whites. The beautiful blue cornflower, also known as bachelor’s buttons because they were once worn by bachelors when they went courting, are excellent flowers for cutting, and the lovely flower belies the foliage that can get quite ugly as it ages. For this reason cornflower is best grown among other flowers with sufficient foliage to hide that of the cornflower. Lobelia plants can be either annuals or perennials, and the delicate purple lobelia is very attractive. Although most people generally regard lobelia as being a purple plant, there are over 350 species of lobelia, and the short-lived perennial lobelia cardinalis has red flowers that appear in the summer through to the fall.

The lobelia siphilitica (Azure Sage), on the other hand, does not appear till the fall and has delicate deep blue flowers. These plants prefer to be planted in clumps where they show their colors to best advantage. The geranium is another garden perennial that looks good in borders, beside ponds or even as ground cover. The true geranium is a hardy perennial with a fabulous range of red to blue colors that love well drained soil and shady conditions. There are over 300 species, and new hybrids coming along all the time.

In summary, garden perennials have to be understood, and once the gardener new to them gets past the first two or three years then he or she will be hooked. They provide a riot of color to any garden, large or small, and are able to be easily moved and transplanted to suit your particular planning needs.

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