Growing Perennial Plants In The Garden

Perennial plants are wonderful, versatile garden plants that come back every year. Using perennials in your garden is an ideal way to create a colorful, flowering garden without the time and expense of planting annuals every spring. Once established, a perennial garden will supply you with years of enjoyment and color. Perennial plants come in a limitless range of colors, sizes, and textures from feathery ornamental grasses to delightful colorful coneflowers.

Perennials tend to be cold hardy, xeric, and low maintenance once established. Most perennial garden plants will die back to the ground each winter, requiring only minimal clean up of dead foliage in the fall or early spring. Perennial plants are so versatile that it is essential when selecting perennial plants for your garden to take into consideration bloom time, bloom color, foliage, height and sunlight requirements. In addition, many perennials are also deer resistant allowing gardeners with deer problems to have a lovely blooming carefree garden!

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How to Grow Perennial Plants:

1. Select a site location in your garden based upon the perennial plants that you have chosen. Most perennial plants will grow in a part-sun location, but perennial that require full sun will flower best when provided 6-8 hours of sun a day, and likewise perennials such as Hostas and Heucheras perform best in a filtered sun or shade location.
   
2. Properly amended soil that has good tilth is the ideal garden soil for most perennial plants. If your garden soil is heavy, or clay-like, add soil amendments such as Green Sand or organic compost to help break up the clay.
   
3. Most perennial plants are fairly drought tolerant once established, but all require consistent irrigation for the first 1-2 growing seasons to become established. Avoid overhead watering, if possible.
   
4. Fertilize perennials with a slow-release balanced organic fertilizer such as Down to Earth Rose and Flower or Down to Earth All Purpose fertilizer. If needed supplement the slow-release fertilizer with a liquid kelp fertilizer during the growing season. Organic slow release fertilizers help to encourage healthy, robust root systems, which will feed the plant for years to come. Avoid high nitrogen fertilizers such as Miracle-Gro or Scotts, which promote fast foliar growth at the expense of producing good root systems.
   
5. To keep perennial plants blooming throughout the summer, deadhead, or remove spent blooms before they start to set seeds. In the fall, leave spent flowers such as Echinacea up to provide food for winter migratory birds.
   
6. Perennial typically die back down to ground during the winter months. In cold areas that receive snow-pack, clean-up perennial in the spring once new growth has started to emerge. Cleaning up spent foliage in the spring rather than in the fall will help to protect the crown of the plant from winter damage. In warmer gardening zones, clean up the spent foliage in the fall, prior to winter rains.