Perennial gardening can bring a special satisfaction to the home gardener, because perennials bloom year after year. When you participate in perennial gardening you know that you will reap rewards from this season’s work for years to come.

Perennial Gardening Is Easy

One of the best aspects of perennial gardening is working with plants that are hardy. Most perennials can withstand heat, drought, and cold equally well, making them ideal for beginning gardeners. There are a few more temperamental perennials, but if you stick to the long list of hardy plants, you will find it is awfully hard to kill your perennial garden.

There are three ways to start a perennial gardening project. You can start your perennial garden from seed, purchase mature plants from a nursery or propagate perennials through division. Starting perennials from seed is inexpensive, but it does require quite a bit of patience. Most perennials grow well from seed, but it usually takes two seasons before your plants will bloom. Once the plants are established, you will have many years of re-blooming perennial gardening ahead of you. It is a great idea to add seeds to you garden plan each year, but you have to realize that you might not see any results for a season or two. For this reason it isn’t a very good idea to do all of your perennial gardening from seed.

Most people do their perennial gardening from mature plants that are purchased from a nursery. Most nursery perennials are two to three years old, which means that you will see immediate blooms from anything you plant. It is always smart to have a few established plants in your garden, but if you want to landscape your entire yard with mature nursery bought perennials, prepare to pay a hefty price. When you transplant store bought perennials, make sure that you give them plenty of space. Perennials come back every year and get bigger each season, so the small shrub you plant this year will need more space each season to come.

The best way to propagate perennials is by division. Ask your friends to share the perennials in their yard at the beginning and end of each garden season. Dividing perennials is very beneficial to the plants. When a perennial is divided it has more room to grow and usually will bloom better and grow faster. Each season, you can add to your perennial garden simply by dividing your plants and placing the divisions in new spots in your yard.