Perennials Ideas, Tips & Guides

Colorful Summer Plantings for Sun and Shade Attract pollinators and wildlife to your garden with these colorful combinations for sun and shade gardens. Dreaming of summer

Summer Perennial Bed with Mighty Chestnut Daylily 'Mighty Chestnut' daylily is a mighty fine addition to summer perennial beds. Add colorful perennials to summer-blooming beds

Editor's Choice: Mighty Chestnut Daylily ‘Mighty Chestnut’ daylily's outstanding blooms put it a step above its classic older cousins. ‘Mighty Chestnut’ daylily (Hemerocallis hybrid)

Are you looking for inspiration on the best perennial plants for pots?

How to Create Colorful Flower Borders Learn how Heather Thomas of Cape Cottage Garden keeps her flower borders colorful from spring through fall! Tour Heather Thomas’ colorful flower borders in New Jersey

Colorful Spring Garden Bed with ‘Hino-Crimson’ Azalea Start your growing season by showcasing the vibrant blooms of 'Hino-Crimson' azalea along with other shade garden favorites. Add a burst of spring color with ‘Hino-Crimson’ azalea

How to Grow Coral Bells Coral bells bring colorful foliage and airy blossoms to any garden! Here's how to grow them. Add coral bells to your garden!

Are you looking for inspiration on drought tolerant plants?  This article has 50 great suggestions for low maintenance plants that will tolerate hot, dry weather.

Spring Shade Garden Plan with Cowslip Fill your spring shade garden with cowslip, coral bells and bleeding heart! Enjoy spring blooms in shade with cowslip

How to Grow Cowslip Cowslip (Primula veris) is a beautiful early-spring flower for shade. Learn how to grow it here! Cowslip Primula veris

How to Grow Asparagus Curious about how to grow asparagus? We'll break it down for you here! Growing asparagus

Unique Flowers with Patterned Petals Check out these 10 unique flowers with gorgeous color patterns to add interest to your garden. Unique flowers for the garden

Are you looking for advice on the best plants for outdoor pots?

Showy Shade Garden Ideas Create a beautiful shade garden with these plant combinations that showcase foliage and shade-blooming flowers. Planting ideas for your shade garden

2024's Best New Garden Plants: Perennials for Shade Check out these new varieties for 2024 that will grow beautifully in shade. Best new shade perennial introductions for 2024

2024's Best New Garden Plants: Perennials for Sun Looking for some new perennials to jazz up your borders? Take a look at these amazing new perennials for sun! 2024's New perennials for sun

Easy-Care Fall Garden Planting Ideas Adding perennials and cool-season annuals can bring a whole new look to your fall garden borders! Grow a fabulous fall garden with these easy-care planting ideas

5 Ways to Get Rid of Weeds Without Pulling Them Are you tired of hand-pulling weeds? Try these different techniques you may or may not have heard of for controlling weeds in your garden. Try these five methods to get rid of weeds without hand-pulling!

‘Millenium’ allium has an upright habit that makes it a cinch to tuck in between other summer-blooming plants and creates an interesting contrast to the mounding cushion spurge and snow-in-summer growing nearby in this garden plan. Its ball-shaped blooms stand out among the spiky salvia and domes of euphorbia. And if deer have been browsing your garden, this is one border they'll give a pass — these perennials rarely get nibbled. Growing conditions for this drought-tolerant border Give this drought-tolerant group full sun for the most flowers and best foliage color and well-drained soil to avoid rot. There's no real need to feed this group of plants that

It’s not often that a perennial comes along that can be described (just like Mary Poppins) as practically perfect in every way. But that is a practically perfect description for ‘Millenium’ allium. Close to foolproof, ‘Millenium’ is super drought tolerant and grows from a group of small bulbs packed together in a large clump. Plants have a compact, upright habit with grassy leaves and a profusion of large 2-inch, lavender-pink drumstick flower heads that bloom for up to a month or more in mid- to late summer. ‘Millenium’ allium (Allium hybrid) Type Perennial Blooms Large 2-in. bright rosy-purple rounded clusters in mid- to late summer Light Full sun Soil Well-d

I used to grow Joe Pye weed, Eupatorium purpureum (above), in the back row of mixed borders with much smaller perennials. Eventually I relegated all these super-tall types to a bed of their own, where they could shine together instead of be the only bright light in beds with foreground companions who had seen better days, the sometimes-unavoidably tattered heroes of spring and early summer.One other resident of the big bed is Rudbeckia ‘Herbstsonne’ (I also see it listed various places as ‘Herbstonne,’ see comment from Yvonne after the post) or autumn sun coneflower (photo above). It gets to about 8 feet, with a wonderful linear quality and a graceful sway in every breeze.Both of

THE ANNUAL VEGETABLE-GARDEN ARCHAEOLOGICAL DIG yielded the usual suspects—perennials and small shrubs I plunge in there for wintertime storage, things I use in summer pots: huge hosta clumps (I do love hostas) and Hakonechloa and other random bits. In went 3 inches of compost, 10 pounds of lime per 100 square feet, an all-natural organic fertilizer made of meals and manures, seeds for short rows of various salad greens, and a few-dozen onion plants.

LESPEDEZA THUNBERGII: A 6-by-6 fountain of late-summer into fall purple glory. Easy, too.HAKONECHLOA ‘ALL GOLD’: The Japanese forest grass turns my shady garden areas golden tones from May into winter.HELLEBORE HYBRIDS: Dry shade? No problem. Forgiving, beautiful, extra-early blooming perennials with evergreen foliage to boot.SEDUM ‘MATRONA’: Maybe my favorite of the taller sedums, all blue-green and pinkish in that sedum-y way.GERANIUM PHAEUM ‘SAMOBOR’: Perennial geraniums are a must; this one’s perhaps the mustest, showy and cooperative.LATHYRUS VERNUS: A little perennial pea of early spring (above) that’s delicate and durable; one of my sprin

LATHYRUS VERNUS, the spring vetchling, is a non-vining, carefree perennial pea I cannot imagine spring without. Not familiar with it? Read on.PULMONARIA RUBRA has been at it for weeks here. No variegation in its leaves, like many of the showier lungworts (as pulmonarias are called) have, but hey, red’s pretty special in early spring, isn’t it?PACHYSANDRA PROCUMBENS, the American species (above), is bloo

Now as a rural dweller I mostly talk to the birds outside, so Skype and phone sessions have to substitute. My friend Katherine Tracey and I got into it the other day–lots of, “Have you ever grown (fill in the blank)?” or, “Did you see the new color of (insert Latin plant name)?” and then wondering aloud if each one is really a good performer or not, and worth trying.I thought it would be fun to bring all of you into the conversation, too, so once you listen to our chat, tell us your own powerhouse plants, in the comments. Read along as you listen to the Feb. 15, 2016 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the player below. You can subscribe to all future editions on iTunes or Stitcher (and browse my archive of podcasts here).Background on

Kathy, of Avant Gardens retail and mail order nursery in Dartmouth, Massachusetts, also helps clients design and refine their landscapes, creating spaces she describes as intimate but not fussy, like her home garden. She relies on a wide palette of plants—including lots of dramatic perennials.We talked about best practices for proactive cutbacks starting in June, and continuing now. About perennial mums to invest in (and how to care for them). About all the really tall guys of late summer—lots of sunflower relatives, and also the ironweeds or Vernonia, among others. That’sVernonia letermannii blooming above around a variegated yucca in her garden top of page.Read along as you listen to the Aug.

I’ve rounded up some of the best to tackle in the monthly Q&A segment with help from my friend Ken Druse. Ken, an award-winning garden photographer and author of more books than I can count, including “The New Shade Garden” and “Making More Plants,” produced his own “Real Dirt” podcast for 10 years, all available on KenDruse dot com (and still available on iTunes, too).Read along as you listen to the March 6, 2107 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the player below. You can subscribe to all future editions on iTunes or Stitcher (and browse my archive of podcasts here). This is the second segment of the March Q&A program—find the first

But through a friend I learned recently about another UW-Madison feature called the Allen Centennial Garden, and about its director and his passion for perennials that don’t just flower and then sit there unremarkably, but earn their keep beautifully through more than a single moment or season—and without excessive maintenance, either. (Above, an example is bowman’s root, or Porteranthus.) The Allen Centennial Garden’s director Benjamin Futa told me about the garden and also about great plants we should been keeping an eye out for as we shop the catalogs this winter—perennials that really perform. He even confessed to having a touch of color-blind

It got me thinking formal.The Mt. Cuba press release described the redesign of a formal garden originally created in the 1940s to complement the estate’s impressive Colonial Revival home (one that’s now on the National Register).  And the photos looked inspired by a proper English-style mixed border–except the headline and captions all made it clear: the new plant palette is n

“Hey, let’s make it another edition of our Desert Island Plants series on the radio show and podcast,” we decided. And so favorite natives of spring are the topic this week.Talking about our most-loved spring native woodland perennials—from blue cohosh (just emerging one April, above) and merrybells, to various trilliums and Virginia bluebells and more—is a perfect fit for Ken Druse. His books “The Natural Shade Garden” in 1992 and “The New Shade

In most of the country this spring 2020, we’re not out shopping at garden centers, browsing for new adoptees the way we usually would be. But maybe you, like Ken Druse and I, are ready to do some shopping in your own garden, looking for divisions of favorite things that would work elsewhere, or simply keeping that bee balm from overrunning everything else that shares the same bed with it. We discussed dividing plants—the how, the when, the why, and how even certain shrubs (not just herbaceous perennials) can be divided. Ken even made a step-by-step video for us of the process.Plus: Comment in the box at the bottom of the page to enter to win a copy of Ken’s “Making  More Plants” book.Read along as you listen to the April 13, 2020 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the player below. You can subscribe to all future editions

My annual Seed Series continues, and with help from Ken, author of “Making More Plants: The Science, Art, and Joy of Propagation,” I also tackled growing primulas from seed, spinach failures, direct-sowing some perennials and biennials, and Ken’s adventures sowing citrus seed and more. (That’s Daucus carota ‘Dara,’ above, that Ken grew recently.)When we reached out in December to get your Urgent Seed Questions, we got so many that we taped two shows—and even at that, some will be tackled in future episodes with guest experts. As we did in Part 1, when we covered seed-starting basics, we’re giving away a copy of Ken’s book “Making

I’VE BEEN SCOUTING around in my garden for orphaned plants, ones that used to be in visually pleasing clumps or masses, but because of expanding shade or a naughty vole or who knows what, aren’t looking as good as they used to. Over in New Jersey, Ken Druse has been digging and dividing some perennials, too, but for different reasons.

Toshi is in his third year as director of horticulture at the former estate called Wethersfield garden in Dutchess County, New York, with its 3-acre formal gardens plus 7 acres of wilderness garden and commanding views of the Catskills and Berkshire Mountains.Toshi and his team are bringing the gardens back to life, and he told me about the place, and specifically about the tasks of editing and dividing that every perennial gardener needs to do, whatever their garden scale. (Above, a tangle in one of the Wethersfleid cutting garden’s annual beds, with Gladiolus ‘Wine and Roses,’ Zinnia ‘Benary’s Giant Lime,’ Rudbeckia hirta ‘Indian Summer,’

Jared is an associate professor of horticulture at Stephen F. Austin State University in Texas, and the creator of the “Planted” blog and e-newsletter, and the monthly “Plantastic Podcast.” He’s been gardening since about age 5, and I was glad to chat with him, to do some forecasting together.Read along as you listen to the February 27, 2023 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the player below. You can subscribe to all future editions on Apple Podcasts (iTunes) or Spotify or Stitcher (and browse my archive of podcasts here).naming our own garden trends, with jared barnesMargaret Roach: Hello, Jared. We have so many friends in common, and plants in common [laughter]

Fuchsia is a genus of flora that grow upright, cascade, or creep. They display exquisite nodding or upward-facing, bell-like or tubular corollas, and upturned sepals.Many have distinctive features like ruf