Perennial plants for the yard

Perennial plants for the yard

Perennials for the yard - which species to choose for long-lasting beauty

Annual flowers (like petunias, cobblestones and tagetis) offer fast and bright flowering, but they have one huge drawback – with the onset of the first winter frosts, they die, and next spring you have to start all over again. This means an annual outlay of money, time and labor for replanting.

If you want stable, mature and easy to maintain garden, the foundation of your landscaping should be perennials for the yard (called in landscape design “feathers”). Once planted in the right place, they stay in your yard for years. Their root system survives the winter underground without problems, and each spring they spring up bigger, richer and more lavish. Here are the best types and rules for their selection.

Content

Perennial species for full sun and drought

If your yard is open and exposed to all-day sun, you need extremely hardy species, which do not wilt from the heat:

  • Echinacea (Echinacea): An extremely beautiful and powerful flower with large flowers, daisy-like, in pink, purple, yellow or orange. It blooms tirelessly from mid-summer to the first frosts and attracts many butterflies.
  • Salvia / Garden tea (Salvia): He loves the sun. Forms dense tufts of erect purple or blue flower-bearing spikes. Blooms in waves throughout the season, and its aroma repels pests from neighboring plants.
  • Lavender (Washing her): A classic in the exterior. Evergreen perennial semi-shrub, which requires minimal watering and perfectly tolerates stony and poor soils.

Perennial species for part shade and full shade

Shaded areas under trees behind fences or on the north side of the house often look gray and boring. However, these species develop perfectly there:

  • Hosta (Hosta): The Shadow Queen. It is not valued for its colors, and because of its stunning foliage. Its leaves can be huge, heart-shaped, in shades of deep green, blue-grey or with beautiful white and yellow edging.
  • Hoichera (Heuchera): A small plant with an amazing visual effect. Heuchers offer a unique palette of leaf colors - from rich caramel, through fiery orange, to dark purple, almost black. It is perfect for a low shade border.
  • Astilbe (Astilbe): A wonderful perennial for semi-shaded and moist places. Blooms with very ethereal, fluffy panicles in pink, white or red color, which bring tenderness to the beds.

Ornamental grasses: The eternal charm of the garden

Ornamental grasses are a must-have element in modern perennial landscaping. They give structure, volume and sense of movement (swaying in the wind), by filling the gaps between blooming flowers.

  • Miscanthus (Miscanthus): High, mighty grass, which produces beautiful fluffy sultanas in autumn. It looks great as a background at the bottom of the beds.
  • Penisetum / Chetinest koilo (Pennisetum): Lower grass, which forms a perfect, fountain-shaped tuff with meki, caterpillar-like spikes.
  • Blue heron (Glaucous fescue): Dwarf grass with a very specific, intense blue-gray color of the needles, ideal for rock gardens and the foreground of compositions.

How to keep perennials in perfect shape?

Although they require little care, feathered ones need two main manipulations a year:

Cleaning after the season: Most broadleaf perennial flowers wither completely in winter. It is best to cut their dry stems low to the ground (at approx 5 cm) in late fall or early spring (before March), to make room for the new clean growth.

In addition, to everyone 3-4 years it is good tufts of plants like salvia, hosta and ornamental grasses should be split with a shovel in the spring and replanted. This rejuvenates them and gives you free new plants for the rest of the yard.

Frequently asked questions

1. Should I protect perennials from frost in winter??
The species, which we select for our projects, are completely cold-resistant for the climate in Bulgaria. Their root overwinters safely underground. In more delicate species (or in many mountainous areas) during the first winter after planting, the soil around the root can be mulched with tree bark or dry leaves for insurance.

2. How long do perennial flowers bloom??
Unlike annuals, which bloom continuously, but they die quickly, individual perennial species have a specific flowering period – usually between 4 and 8 weeks. Therefore, the secret of professional design is in beds to combine species, which bloom successively ( some in May, others in July, third in September), to have continuous flowering.

3. Can perennials be grown in pots on the terrace??
Yes, most of them (especially lavender, sage, heuchera and the lower grasses) they develop excellently in large and deep pots, as long as the containers have good water drainage holes.

Conclusion

The use of perennials for yard is the most stable, an economical and professional step in the construction of any garden. They provide a stable landscape skeleton, they require minimal watering and maintenance compared to annual beds and turn the garden into a living organism, which changes dynamically and becomes more luxurious and opulent with each passing year.

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