Buying perennials through mail-order

Buying through mail-order can be very convenient. You can shop from a catalog or on a Web site in the dead of winter or in the middle of the night in your jammies. Also, you can spend plenty of time thinking over your plans. After all, mail-order companies often carry a broader range of varieties than local providers do. And after you order your plants, you get them delivered to your door at the right time to be planted — all without standing in line!
Just make sure you pick out a company that’s been in business for a while, that’s able to answer your phone or e-mail questions, and that your gardening friends have had good experiences with.

Getting perennials in containers

You can usually purchase partially grown perennial in pots, and they come in a variety of pot sizes, from a mere 2 inches on up to 5 gallons. Both mailorder nurseries and local retailers sell perennials in. The larger the plant is, the more mature — and expensive — it is, and the more immediate your gratification; however, a smaller plant can catch up quickly if you plant it in an appropriate site and give it good care. Consider also how big of a hole you want to dig. Here are some important ideas to remember so you can be sure of getting a good potted plant:

• Buy a healthy plant. Examine the entire plant:
• Look above and below the leaves as well as along the stems for signs of insect or disease damage. A few yellowing leaves are fine.
• Examine the crown for signs of rot (no good, obviously) and fresh new shoots (very good).
• Pop the plant out of its pot and examine the roots. They should be crisp and viable, often white or brown, not wiry, wry, limp, or black. Avoid pot-bound plants.
• Choose a plant that’s not yet in bloom. Some growers force plants into early bloom so they’ll look good at the stores, but don’t be seduced! The trip home in your car or adjusting to the transplanting process often causes blossoming perennials to jettison expendable growth; in other words, they ditch petals and unfurling buds. If your new plant sheds its flowers on the way home, make sure you plant the perennial well and care for it; it may bloom again soon enough. However, many perennials don’t rebloom, so the show may be over until next year. You’re best off choosing a plant that’s conserving its energy.
• Don’t buy out of season. Bargain perennials aren’t always a bargain. Those plants for sale in midsummer have a stressful time of establishing themselves; fall-planted ones may do just fine or may succumb to winter’s cold.
• Have a few alternatives in mind. You can’t always get what you want, but with all your options, you should be able to find something that works.

Choosing plants for perennial garden

After you have your layout planned, you’re ready to begin your plant selection. In addition to choosing plants for the bloom times and colors, take these points into consideration when choosing your plants:

• Consider height and width. Perennial gardeners have to be patient and be able to imagine the future because new plants are small. Find out your chosen plants’ expected mature sizes and allow them enough elbow room in your plan. Plan to position taller-growing plants to the back of a traditional border or the center of an island bed; array lower growers at their feet. If you need help visualizing, some software programs let you see what your garden will look like as plants mature.
• Mix it up. Nature loves diversity, and the variety looks great — it keeps the eye moving even as it lets individual plants stand out. So intersperse a variety of plant forms, from spiky ones to mound-formers.
• Match the plant to the growing conditions. Save yourself a lot of grief and wasted money and effort by choosing plants that are clearly labeled as sun-lovers or shade-lovers, as the case may be in your intended site.

As for soil conditions, some perennials like the dirt rich and moist; others like it dry and only moderately fertile. Do your homework here, too. (Of course, you can improve or alter the existing conditions if you like) If you have very rocky soil, you can take advantage of the situation by creating a perennial rock garden.

Designing perennial beds and borders

The most common way to display perennials is together, in a large flowerbed or, space permitting, a long border of either meandering form or with firm boundaries. Quite honestly, these methods of growing perennials are purely practical: You can prepare the soil, plant them together, and care for them together
Here are some basic layout tips and techniques that the professional garden designers use, easily transferred to your own garden:

• Plan to be in scale. Some sense of proportion between your home, garage, and/or shed (whatever’s nearest to the proposed perennial garden) is key. A big house, for instance, does best with wider beds and taller plants; a smaller one is better served by a series of smaller beds and lower-growing plants.
• Match garden style with structures. A casual bungalow, cottage, or onelevel home likes an informal perennial garden, with wavy-edged boundaries; a larger or more imposing home, or one with strong architectural elements and lines, needs a more formal, straighter-edged approach.
• Try a dress rehearsal: Lay out the lines of your proposed garden in advance with a hose, outdoor electrical cord, rope, or even chalk or flour.

Set potted plants or lawn chairs or whatever here and there within its bounds as stand-ins (these items should match the perennials in terms of mature height and bulk, not the size of the plants you buy); stand back and assess. Tinker with the plan until you’re satisfied, and then sketch it on paper so you can remember it on planting day.

Choreography: Timing the perennial blooming

Although some perennials bloom all summer long, just like your favorite annuals, others do not. They have a period of glory that peaks for a week or several weeks, and then the show subsides.
Gardeners have lots of ways to find out in advance when a perennial will bloom and for approximately how long. Look it up in a gardening reference book. Do research on the Internet. Check a print or online gardening catalog (bearing in mind, however, that some merchants may exaggerate!). Look on the tag or label. Ask a garden-center staffer or someone who’s a member of a gardening club. Best of all, ask someone in your area who’s already growing your perennial of choice, because performance varies by climate and even soil conditions.
Nature being as flexible and fickle as it sometimes is, your show may run longer or shorter than you originally planned, or you may end up with some overlap. However, coordinating plants to share the stage at approximately the same time works. You can fine-tune later, after you’ve basked in your early successes.

Long-Term Strategy for Your Perennial Garden

So many great perennials, so much variety is available that one of the great joys — and challenges — of growing them is combining different kinds of perennials in plantings. But because different perennials bloom at different times, and because of the relatively slow growth of perennials (compared to annuals), perennial gardening usually involves some advance planning so you can get the most bang for your buck and get the exciting look you want, when you want it.
Don’t be intimidated. If you’re displeased with a result, you’re still in better shape than a painter. Instead of throwing out the canvas, you can simply pull out or move a plant and even replace it with something else until the result looks great. And while you’re waiting for perennials to take hold, you can fill in the bare spots with some annuals or bulbs. That said, perennial gardening doesn’t have to be a hit-or-miss operation.
You can gather information from others, using their knowledge and ideas. Copy or approximate what you like, or borrow a good idea as a jumping off point. Inspiration is all around you — in books, gardening magazines, and other gardens, both public and private. Above all, have fun! Perennial gardening is a very enjoyable hobby, with a broad and forgiving learning curve.

Tender perennials

Contrary to popular belief, the upper parts of the Northern Hemisphere don’t have the corner on perennials. Lots of plants from milder climes (say, USDA Zones 8, 9, 10, and warmer, right on into the tropics) meet the perennial description. These repeat performers burst forth in warm spring weather, enjoy the summer months, and slow down or die down in the fall, roots still very much alive. They return in glory when the year cycles around to springtime again.

Obviously, you can grow tender perennials with impunity if you’re in a mildclimate area. However, everyone else can enjoy them, too: Gardeners just have to get the tender treasures through winter, because these plants can’t tolerate or survive cold temperatures. Or certainly, you can leave your tender perennials in the garden to perish over the winter — which makes them, essentially, annuals and means you may ending up buying new ones next spring.
Popular examples of tender perennials include angelonia, coleus, gerbera, impatiens, and pentas.

Hardy perennials

The broad group of hardy perennials is justly popular in colder climates (they’re generally appropriate for gardens in USDA Zones 3). These plants emerge each spring, producing foliage and flowers. Come fall, their top growth dies down and the show is over for the year. But the roots live on underground, waiting to revive and do it all again when warm weather returns.
Popular examples of hardy perennials include aster, columbine, coneflower, daylily, delphinium, mums, penstemon, peony, phlox, and Shasta daisy

Looking at Perennials, the Repeat Performers

The broadest definition of a perennial plant simply states that it’s a herbaceous, or non-woody, plant — as opposed to, say, a shrub or tree —that last a couple years or more. Perennials, like lilies and daffodils, can be bulbs. Herbaceous perennials are plants that have foliage that dies back to the ground, and new foliage and shoots sprout from their overwintering roots next spring. Perennial plants are a wonderfully varied group, quite possibly the most varied group a gardener can work with. No matter where you live and what your growing conditions are (climate, soil type, sun or shade), you have plenty of plants to choose from. So which perennials should you include in your garden? Start off by knowing which general group can work best for you: hardy perennials or tender perennials.