Choosing Perennials For Your Garden
If you’ve been growing a vegetable garden for a while, you might be feeling slightly disappointed that it looks plain and not very colorful. I started my gardening career with a vegetable garden, but after a couple of years I felt ready for something a little more pleasing and interesting to look at. After complaining to a friend about my dull looking garden, he suggested that I try planting some perennials as it could be a great way to liven up my garden without adding a lot of extra work.
A friend advised me that a perennial garden would add beautiful color to my garden and I wouldn’t have to redo it every year like with other types of gardens. That sounded good to me so I gave it a try and loved the results.
If you wish to try your hand at perennial gardening you need to make sure that your soil has proper drainage. To check this you can dig a hole in your garden area and fill it with water and let it sit for a day. Then fill it again and wait 10 hours to check to see if the water has drained. If it hasn’t then the drainage may not be good enough for a perennial bed on the ground and you should use a raised bed for your plantings.
Picking out the right perennials for your area can be tricky. The goal should be to have blooming flowers for as long as possible during the year. During your planning stage you can create an outline for the whole year. Research the different types of flowers that you like and when they bloom. If you plan it right, your yard can be a constantly changing array of colors and flowers.
Knowing which perennials to plant for the best showing takes some planning and research. You can do this research in books or online, sometimes even local gardening shows. Or, you can visit a local nursery or greenhouse and ask for assistance. The staff at these places is very knowledgeable about what will grow the best in your local area. Sometimes you can even find seed mixtures specially blended for your geographic climate.
With careful planning and some help from an expert either a book or local gardening expert, you can have beautiful blooms nearly year round in your garden. You can plant your seeds in groups and place different seeds in the group that have different growing cycles. That way there is always at least one plant in bloom in that section of the garden at all times. When one plant dies, another is just starting to bloom and so on.
When planting your seeds be sure to leave enough space between the different plants as some perennials will spread very rapidly and some will grow back thicker and thicker every year. This will require some transplanting to avoid the plants from choking each other out. Thinning out your perennial garden like I do with my Siberian Iris? allows you to share with friends. So they can place them in their own perennial garden to enjoy. With a little tlc at planting time, you will have beautiful blooms in no time at all.
