Low Maintenance Perennials

Perennial flowers are a colorful component of low-maintenance landscapes. Once established, a perennial flower garden will provide the landscape with several years of spectacular beauty. Annual flower gardens, on the other hand, need to be replanted every year.

All landscape plants require some maintenance. With perennials, this involves watering, fertilizing, weeding, controlling pests, removing wilted blooms, and dividing the plants when necessary. The following perennials require minimal maintenance:

Bleeding heart, peony, and oriental poppy are old-fashioned favorites that are easy to care for.

In shady areas, no plant is as reliable as hosta (ha’-stuh), which is famous for its beautiful foliage. Other low-maintenance perennials with attractive foliage include bergenia and Siberian bugloss.

Several low-maintenance perennials are suitable for sunny, naturalized settings. These include daylily, purple coneflower, perennial sunflower, blazing star, coreopsis, globe thistle, and butterfly weed. - Other low-maintenance perennial flowers include bellflower, Siberian iris, balloon flower, sea lavender and Autumn Joy sedum.

When selecting perennials, always match the proper plants to the environment where they will be planted. The following management strategies will also reduce maintenance needs of perennials:

- Don't take shortcuts when preparing the soil bed. Good soil preparation will get the plants off to a vigorous start, thereby reducing the need for corrective maintenance practices in the future.

- Keep the planting design simple. Elaborate plantings require a great deal of attention. Simple plantings, using only a few plant species, can be both attractive and easy to manage.

- Carefully consider the size of the planting bed. All flower beds require maintenance-know your limitations and plant only what you can manage.

- Space plants properly during the initial planting. If you over-plant, you will have extra pruning, trimming, and thinning. If you under-plant, you may have to fill in with more plants later on.

- Mulch flower beds with 2-4 inches of shredded bark, wood chips, or other organic material. This will reduce weeds, retain soil moisture, and keep soil temperatures moderate. A mulched flower bed will also give the planting a single continuous edge, thereby making mowing easier.

- Perennial ground covers can be especially useful in reducing the high demands of a lawn. Yard work can be significantly reduced by replacing lawn grass with ground covers around trees and shrubs, in small isolated patches of ground, and on steep slopes.

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