Transform Your Garden with the Timeless Charm of Perennials
We all want a perfect garden, but as gardeners or landscapers, we know that to create the ideal garden, we need to make the right choices for the plants, trees, and hardscaping elements we need to use. One popular choice is perennials, which are found in almost every garden.
This article looks at what perennials are, how we use them, their benefits, a few of our favourites and essentially, why we believe that pretty perennials can perfect every garden!
So, for the uninitiated, what are Perennials? Essentially, two primary types of plants are used in gardens: Annuals and Perennials. Annuals complete their entire life cycle in a year, whereas Perennials can live for several years. The roots remain after flowering and dying, producing a new crop the following year.
How do we use Perennials?
Perennials can be used in many ways in a garden – these include…
- As borders – Because they come in various sizes, from low-growing plants for the front of the border to taller plants for the back and because they provide colourful flowers every year, they make perfect garden borders.
- As cut flowers – You don’t have to choose between long-lasting plants and beautiful bouquets—many perennials produce flowers that are perfect for cutting.
- As pollinators – Flowering plants that attract pollinators can lead to more biodiversity in your garden; perennials attract pollinators, which is a beautiful benefit, and perennial plants like lavender, calendula, and salvia are great examples.
- For soil health – Because their roots go deeper into the soil than annuals, perennials can help prevent fertilizers from contaminating groundwater.
- As crops – Some perennials can be used as crops. These include herbs, vegetables, brambles, berries, nuts, fruits, etc.
The many wondrous benefits of perennials
Apart from a few of the apparent benefits already mentioned, there are many benefits to the gardener or Landscaper in using the right perennials in the right way…
- Staggered blooming – With planning, one can stagger your garden’s blooming with perennials because annuals tend to all bloom in the same period. With perennials, on the other hand, you can get blooming flowers from early spring, with clivia miniata or ajuga reptans for example, right up to the middle of winter with the wonderful range of aloes such as aloe cooperii and aloe arborescens.
- Soil cover – When perennials die back, soil cover is created to protect the moisture in the soil from evaporation. It also prevents erosion by wind and rainfall and helps maintain strong soil structure.
- Ecological advantages – Perennials have advantages regarding soil structure, nutrients and water. Because perennials stay for years in the soil, the root systems help improve soil structure; their deeper root system can reach nutrients that are further down in the soil, bringing them to the surface where other plants can access them – finally, perennials also draw up water from lower in the soil making it available to other plants with shallower root systems. This prevents the soil from drying out and becoming vulnerable to erosion.
- Less annual maintenance – Perennials don’t need to be replanted yearly, so the flowerbeds of last year’s plants don’t need to be cleared! Once perennials are established, they need less care as their root systems provide the necessary nutrients.
A few of our favourites
At Windy Willows Wholesale Nursery in Honeydew Johannesburg, we pride ourselves on carrying a wide variety of every type of plant you need to create a great garden, regardless of what style you are going for.
Just a few of our favourite perennials are:
Agapanthus (agapantha). The Blue and White Lily comes in two sizes, from 50cm up to 1m. They are frost hardy and water wise; a must for every garden!
Clivia miniata. Clivias come in a wide range of shades of yellow and orange. Also frost hardy and water wise, they brighten up the shadier areas of the garden and announce the arrival of spring.
The Asparagus myersii (cat’s tail fern) and Asparagus sprengeri fern provide greenery year round and fill those empty spaces.
Dietes or Wild Iris are indigenous and come in either white (grandiflora) or butter yellow (bi-colour). Also water wise, these flowers attract polinators and their leaves are used by weaver birds.
If you’d like to see and learn about more perennials, and all our other plants, visit our Plant Selector page on our website. Better still, why not talk to us for all the advice you need on choosing the suitable foliage, hard and soft landscaping and waterwise devices to create the perfect eco-friendly garden?
We can’t wait to meet you – and happy gardening!
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