Perennial garden flowers make any garden pop up with their bright, vivid colorsand are main flower-bed source. Starting from both annual and biennial plants, notable for their spectacular colours all year round, to perennial maintenance-free herbaceous plants or beautifully blooming shrubs. There is a huge variety of perennial flowering plants,and it is easy to create different compositions which will please the eye all the season round.
Perennial plants in the garden
Perennial garden plants grow back every year without needing to be replanted. Many of them are frost tolerant and generally don’t mind soil conditions. Once you have planted perennials, they will please you for a long time, needing to be dived into two parts much later. When replanting you are free to change the clusters by grouping garden flowers in a renovatedflower bed. Such perennials as tulips, daffodils, crocuses and lilies of the valley bloom in spring; day lilies, lilies, thymes and roses in summer, while coneflower, goldenrod, stonecrop and dahlias bloom in autumn.
After choosing the type of flower bed, you need to select the right flowers for the garden.There is a huge variety of beautiful blooming flowers. In order to choose the species of flower you want to plant, good things to consider are springing conditions like light, soil and moist; lot design, plants compatibility and their completed growth size, blooming period and color spectrum.
Low maintenance plants
It is a good idea to choose low maintenance flowers for your garden. They don’t need frequent watering and additional nutrition adding beauty to your garden. Once you have decided on a place, next step is to choose the flowers themselves. There is a huge variety of low maintenance flowers for the garden, you can plant ox-eye daisy, goldenrod, coneflower, bellflower, peony, campion, carnation and other ornamental plants. Many perennial garden flowers are easy to care for: in order to have a beautiful flower bed nourish the soilboth at the vegetative and budding period, as well as the end of blooming (when renewal buds start to form). If needed water the plants, mulch the soil, deadhead your flowers, divide the shrubsin due time. With proper care your garden plants and flowers will please the eye from early spring to late autumn.
Choosing the flowers for landscaping
Flowers play a big role in creating colourful landscape design. Their shape and leaves texture should accord with the style of the garden; symmetry and geometry define French formal garden best, gentle curves and irregular shapes work for gardenlandscape. Let’s look at the most popular garden flowers.
Roses
Image source: Flickr
Garden roses are one of the most beautiful flowers grown. To achieve long, exuberant blooming they need to be watered, fed and deadheaded. Some measures should be taken to prevent disease as well. Proper placement is also essential: avoid areas near large trees or shrubs and make sure roses getplenty of sun. In landscaping roses are used in flower beds compositions and plat bands, in decorating pergolas and pavilions, in forming green fences. Roses are great to plant as a rosarium. Shrub and wild roses can be planted separately or in small clusters, creating a green fence. Climbing roses work best in decorating pavilions, pergolas and arches. Hybrid tea roses look best in rosariums and planted in small clusters. Poliantharoses are used in creating borders and ridges. They accord well with shrubs and herbaceous plants, as snow-in-summer, betony, fescue, alum root and speedwell. Floribunda roses look great in clusters or in a mixed border, while ground cover roses are used to decorate the space around the pavilions. They work in harmony with blooming herbaceous plants, such as larkspur, blazing star, daylily, aquilegia and with the following shrubs: stephanandra, cinquefoil, small hydrangea and barberry.
Chrysanthemum
Image source: Flickr
Chrysanthemum is an annual and perennial herbaceous plant. They respond to plenty of sun and moisture, preferring neutral sub-acid drained soil. Mums should periodically be fertilized with organic or inorganic fertilizers. Annual chrysanthemum are more frost tolerant and less demanding to the vegetative conditions. Blooming continues from the beginning of June till the early frosts. Different types of perennial chrysanthemum begin to bloom in the late summer and continue to please the eye till late autumn. Mums are usually planted in flower beds and mono bloom clusters; they accord well with foliage shrubs and conifers (barberry Tunberg, physocarpus“Diabolo”, juniper, northern white cedar).
Peonies
Image source: Flickr
Peonies are usually represented by herbaceous perennials (herbaceous peony), more rarely by deciduous shrubs (tree peony). They prefer open, moderately wet garden sites, creating a unique atmosphere when blooming in May and June. Peonies tolerate light shade and can’t stand draughts. Avoid organic fertilizers and damping-off when growing. Herbaceous peonies should be cut before winter and mulched if necessary.Tree peony shootsdon’t rotoff in winter, building up with each year, that’s why before winter they are tied together and covered. Isolated peony shrubs look as good as being put in clusters. They can be placed in lawn background or mallee shrubs group (physocarpus, spiraea, philadelphus). Tree peonies are stunning in a mixed border, near pavilions or benches.
Tulips
Image source: Flickr
Tulips respond well to sun and moist, sandy well-drained soil. They can easily be damaged by all kinds of pests and diseases like gray rot, fusariose, tulip breaking virus. You can avoid this by following these rules: plant and dig out the bulbs in due time, fertilize with organic and inorganic fertilizers.During flower-bud formation and blooming periods tulips need plenty of water. They are used in decorating gardens and parks, in flower beds and lawns, as a border plant as well. Low growing species look stunning in all kinds of rock garden scenes. Tulips can be planted in mixed clusters together with other plants (forget-me-not, daisy, grape-hyacinth, primrose) and shrubs (forsythia, rose bay and weigela).
Daffodils
Image source: Flickr
Daffodils are early-flowering plants which are primarily used in creating flower compositions in gardens, parks and squares. These flowers like plenty of sun, but can tolerate light shade as well.Daffodils generally don’t mind soil conditions, but well-drained fertile soil will do them good. The main requirement (this applies to all bulbous plants) is for the garden not to be damp, to prevent rain and melt water stagnation. Daffodils are generally planted in lawn, in clusters with early-flowering plants (hyacinths, primulas, tulips), in the rock garden scenes and on the edges and shores of garden ponds.
Orchids
Image source: Flickr
Garden lady’s slipper orchids or cypripedium respond well to light shade, loose soil and don’t like water stagnation. Sturdy hybrids purchased from specialized gardening storesare most suitable for bedding. Then the soil can be mulched with peat. Orchids blooming season is late spring and summer, their blossomsbeing rather big in size witha peculiar shape. They can be planted either in mono bloom clusters, or together with low ferns and smallhostas- great companion plants which will grow at the same speed with orchids.
Lotus
Image source: Flickr
Lotus is primarily used in decorating water gardens. This aquatic perennial can grow both in natural and artificial ponds. Lotus flowers enjoy warm sunlight, the blossoms being rather bigwith cinnamon fragrance. In winter consider removing the pot in a cool, shaded location with above zero temperature. In mild climate lotus can winter over in the pond, being covered with branches for protection.
If you know how to select, grow and maintain the flowers in your garden, they will help making your life beautiful and happy.
