Perennial Plants
Perennial plants are amazing in so many ways. They offer everlasting joy. Plant them once, and they will keep popping up year after year and deliver loads of delightful color to your garden. Since perennials are flowers that bloom every year, these gorgeous bursts of color are an excellent investment in any garden.
Most perennials are also super tough! These bold-colored garden treasures require very little fuss to retain their cheerful good looks. They are resilient, low-maintenance and often long-blooming. Plus, perennial flowers come in an exciting array of sizes, shapes and colors. Quite simply, there is no downside to adding heaps of perennials to your garden.
Part of the magic of perennial plants is their incredible versatility and diversity. They are perfect for adding to informal garden spaces, can be used as flower borders or meadow plants and are standouts in rock gardens.
With so many varieties to choose from, how do you get started? To make choosing easier, our team of staff horticulturists suggests you begin by considering the following three traits.
1. Types of Perennial Flowers
Perennial flowers come in all sizes and shapes and in every imaginable shade of purple, pink, blue, yellow, red and white. Mixing a lot of colors together is a great way to add a fun, joyful feeling to any setting. Kaleidoscopic gardens are effective in informal environments where plants grow freely, the result of which is often visually delightful. Think English Cottage Garden and Natural Garden style settings.
Gardeners looking to attract pollinators should invest in a good collection of gorgeous perennials. Beneficial pollinators require many different flower shapes and colors, so the diversity provided by perennial flowers provides an excellent garden buffet for butterflies, bees, hummingbirds and other beneficial insects.
Those who prefer a more classic, organized look may choose to plant a single color. Moonlight gardens are a good example of this style. To achieve this look, gardens are heavily planted with white flowers to reflect the moonlight, illuminating the setting at night. Adding pale blue and lime green touches creates a relaxing atmosphere. Orange and red colors heat the visual palette and impart a fiery energy. Intense, vivid colors are an excellent option for entertainment areas.
Bloom time is another essential consideration when planning your ideal garden. Many perennials are long-blooming, offering weeks or even months of color. We have taken the guesswork out of selecting long bloomers for you by listing them in their own category. We consider long-blooming varieties those that flower for six or more weeks.
Get creative and choose a selection of perennials that take turns blooming throughout the mild seasons! Achieve ultimate curb appeal by selecting a few spring, summer and fall-blooming varieties to achieve non-stop color in your garden.
2. Perennial Garden Uses
Use perennials to set the tone for your garden by mixing and matching to create the look you want. These reliable garden stalwarts always look lovely. Here are four ways to use perennials in your garden:
Perennials Excel as Accent Plants
Accent plants attract attention to one part of the garden. This can be achieved through the use of eye-catching colors or interesting shapes. Picture a bed of lush perennial flowers where the featured plant variety has vertical growth. It’s going to stand out! Grayfeather, bright, tall-growing coneflowers and iris are all examples of perennials with a vertical habit. Accents can also be created by placing showy planters in areas where you want to draw the eye. Some stunning perennials that excel as container accents are sedums, coral bells, carex and Golden creeping Jenny.
Create Delightful Natural Gardens Using Perennial Flowers
Natural Gardens are eco-friendly spaces created to attract and support beneficial pollinators and other garden-friendly wildlife. These gardens are achieved by planting self-sustaining or natural perennials that require very little maintenance. Perennials used in natural planting have free-flowing growth forms. Examples of perennials that tick all the boxes in natural gardens include purple coneflower, phlox, tickseed and, of course, the ever-trusty bee balm, a pollinator magnet.
Perennials Are the Foundation of English Cottage Gardens
English Cottage Gardens epitomize romance and impart an instant summary feel. This garden style usually consists of a collection of perennials, combined haphazardly to create a surprisingly harmonious effect. They are densely planted and include lots of variety. Plant several types of perennials you love to create a memorable, classic Cottage Garden. Choose long-blooming perennials to ensure lots of color throughout the season. Examples of English Cottage Garden perennials include iris, Blue Wonder catmint, yarrow, and Coronation Gold yarrow.
Perennials Are Standouts in Modern Gardens
Plant masses of perennials in large swaths or linear patterns to create a more modern garden style. Keep them neat — nothing too over-the-top. Large groupings of singular perennials create impressive areas of color. Grasses are also a featured element in modern garden designs. Modern Garden perennials you can explore include feather reed grass, sedges, heucheras and hostas.
3. Perennial Benefits
Perennials do more than look beautiful in gardens. These versatile plants have multiple uses, including:
- Attracting birds and pollinators: Planting natives and perennials is a great way to ensure that the birds and pollinators in your local area are fed. Some flowers even give clues from their shape and color about which pollinators they want to attract. Hummingbirds have long, thin beaks to reach deep inside long tubular flowers. Butterflies often prefer particular colors. Birds are usually attracted to flowers for their seeds, so letting your perennials go to seed late in the season is a great way to feed them.
| Perennials to plant to attract pollinators | Perennials to plant to attract birds |
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- Adding delightful fragrance: Many varieties of perennial flowers have a pleasant aroma, and some even have fragrant foliage. Gently crush or rub the leaves of aromatic varieties to unlock the delicious scents of summer. Fragrant flowers often work well as cut flowers since you can bring the heady fragrance inside. The scent of lavender is unmistakable and is one of the most loved perennial flower fragrances of all!
- Excelling as cut flowers: A vase of colorful cut flowers from your own garden is always a treat. Many gardeners create gardens bursting with fragrant flowers to use as cut flowers. Some perennial plant varieties last for extended periods in vases without wilting, making them ideal for flower arrangements. Some even dry naturally and can be preserved in dried flower arrangements. The best perennials for cut flowers include black-eyed Susan, peonies, purple coneflower, bee balm, blazing star, yarrow, tickseed, salvias, anemone and montbretia.
Visit a Stadler Nurseries Garden Center or Order Perennials Online Now
Explore our perennial category to find flowering plants of every shape and size. Plant them once and let them amaze you yearly, or divide established plant roots and spread the joy to other sections of your garden. If you live within 30 miles of one of our Garden Centers, you can get the best online perennials delivered right to your door. Orders over $125 get free delivery. Browse our categories, find varieties you love and order now!