Let's Talk Perennials with Laura from Garden Answer

hey guys how's it going so today i want to talk about 15 different types of perennials just those types that are solid like workhorse perennials that give back a ton in the garden while not needing a ton of care and i feel like every garden should have them and i've grown every single one of the varieties that i'm about ready to share in this video and they're all fairly easy to find as well so i'm breaking this up into three categories there'll be five perennials that like full sun five that like shade and then five that like somewhere in between so let's start with the full sun ones first number one are sedums and if you want a low maintenance perennial this is probably the best one on my list actually if you have a spot that's really tough to grow anything else sedums are amazing they come in lots of different growth patterns like growth habits there are ground cover types ones that grow upright lots of different leaf structure leaf color bloom color you don't have to deadhead them they're resistant to deer they're drought tolerant they don't want to be fertilized it's basically like plant me and just leave me alone and let me be beautiful in fact if these plants are getting too much love they'll show you if they're getting too much fertilizer water or not enough light they will flop over so they just are one of those types that i love to put in flower beds that i know i have like a difficult time getting water to that area or the soil is just really not great there sedum is always what i lean on first a few really amazing varieties that i've grown in my garden lemon jade is probably one of my favorites it grows about 18 inches tall a couple feet wide zone three through nine and it comes up with like this kind of sagey green kind of a medium green color leaf and then when it starts to bloom it's kind of like creamy colored on the top and then the blooms are yellow instead of pink so it's a really beautiful vibrant look in the garden and i never cut my senums back or hardly ever cut them back in the fall because they're so strong their stems are strong they can hold up to quite a bit of snow and they just they look like beautiful winter structures so you've got their beautiful growth in the spring and then you can enjoy them enjoy them all the way through your winter and there's only a brief moment after you've cut them back in late winter before their spring growth emerges that you don't actually see them so they really are multi-season interest there's a really pretty variegated ground cover called boogie woogie um that i've planted actually i planted in a landscape we did a project in last year and then i've got some in my own garden and they look really good in pots too if you're doing mixed succulent or succulent arrangements the boogie woogie is a really pretty one that has yellow blooms and then like a green leaf with a cream variegation or creamy yellow variegation that looks beautiful spilling over the side of a container another couple upright ones that i really love and have grown through the years are autumn joy and that one that was super popular you can find that one in a lot of different garden centers it's kind of an old standby and it's got green leaves beautiful pink blooms that kind of deep into a like a russet like mauvish color in the fall and i use them in fall arrangements all the time and then there's one called autumn charm that's a sport of the autumn joy much the same bloom structure and growth habit but it's got variegated leaves number two is russian sage and this is another one that reacts quite a bit like sedum in the garden you want to put it somewhere that's full sun kind of like not very great of soil it doesn't want a ton of water once it's established it will do the same thing as seed and well if it gets too much of any of those you'll see it start to flop but the one variety i really have been loving the last i don't know three four years we've been growing it's called denim and lace it doesn't get as big as the traditional varieties so about 28 to 32 inches tall about two and a half feet wide and it's a very dense growing perennial traditional varieties are beautiful as well like the taller the bloom spikes are a little bit more open so you can see a little bit more airiness through the traditional varieties this one is a little bit more compact and the blooms are a little bit deeper and it starts to bloom mid-summer when everything starts to lull and it lasts all the way through fall for us and i love the fact that i can cut it back and it comes back fresh the next year and so it makes it very easy to use even in a formal garden sort of situation which is where i have ours planted they're also resistant to deer and rabbits as is lavender and i don't even know why i didn't give that its own category so i'm going to lump it in with the russian sage just because they're kind of the same color bloom lavender is an amazing one that doesn't want a whole lot of attention you plant them in a full sun well draining spot and they'll perform for you we've been growing a couple different varieties sweet romance is a smaller statured lavender 12 to 18 inches tall and wide a very dark colored bloom which i like because i like to dry lavender and you know when you dry flowers it typically lose a little bit of color since this one is starting so much deeper in color already it's a really nice dried flower and then we also grow munstead which grows quite a bit bigger we've got that lining a walkway up to our back sun porch and boy i want to say it gets a couple feet tall and maybe two and a half feet wide or so and the blooms are a little skinnier and a little bit lighter color number three are rudbeckias so black-eyed susans these are an amazing perennial and i feel like they're so normal you know they're such this normal perennial but they are so like in my garden when they start to bloom i wonder why i haven't planted more every single year they come out again about mid-summer and start to put on their show you don't have to deadhead them and they sit there just looking beautiful until a hard frost takes them there's lots of different varieties of rudbeckia they are deer resistant and they're juggling tolerant so if you have black walnut trees nearby you can actually plant rudbeckias and they'll do okay there's a traditional variety called goldsterm that's readily available easy to find and one that i highly recommend you put in your garden i feel like it's a good second layer plant like if you've got your flower bed you know you plant it one row back so you can plant a drift of something else a tiny bit shorter i think they grow about two feet tall the gold storm so plant something a little bit shorter right in front of it and so you've got kind of this beautiful brightly colored perennial popping out from behind something else but there's a lot of other varieties rebecca out there lots of colors definitely check the growing zone and make sure it matches yours or that it will survive in yours because there are some tender varieties to to be looking out for however even tender varieties i feel like are worth growing every single year because they grow so huge and produce so many blooms it's worth it so i grow cherry brandy every year and it's a beautiful burgundy it's actually a zone five and there's also one called irish eyes that i really like that has the yellow it's a little bit more like a lemon yellow petal with a green eye and it's a really interesting looking rudbeckia number four are echinaceas which you usually find in the zone four through nine range they're deer resistant love the sun tons of different growth habits and colors so you'll find some that grow taller if you want to put some kind of back from the edge of your border there are some that stay very short that you can put right at the front i think they're a beautiful container option too because they bloom for most of the summer and they've got such a beautiful um a beautiful bloom structure i think they're just a great one for that purpose they're also a type of perennial along with rudbeckia is that i don't cut back typically in the fall because they look so gorgeous through the wintertime i mean if you get the urge to make a flower arrangement you can go out and cut one of the seed heads and they bring very interesting color and texture to your arrangement and they do provide a lot of forage for wildlife as well so you'll find some like traditional looking echinacea purporia the traditional echinacea that's kind of that purpley pink that grows a little bit taller then you'll find like double scoop cranberry i planted some of those uh last spring or spring before but they're a double pom-pom type so they've got this huge like pom-pom on the top and then the petals around the the pom-pom kind of face downward just very interesting looking yellow my darling i've got a bunch of those in my garden a very clear yellow i just had to transplant a bunch of mine from around the front of our gazebo this spring and they haven't skipped a beat they're already growing like they were planted in that spot originally which makes me very happy uh price is white is a beautiful white echinacea i think that one grows about 20 inches tall and it's got a huge cone in the center you'll find that some varieties of echinacea have the huge kind of seed head cone in the middle and some are a little bit smaller and i particularly like the one and the price is white because it's got a lot of orange in it and it's just i don't know if it just contrasts really well with the white petals or what it is but it's a beautiful mix and then one that i always loved is green envy so the petals start out pink right by the center and then they turn to a really beautiful green and the last one in the full sun category are veronicas veronicas are a favorite of mine i love blooms that have that long kind of spiky appearance i think that it brings movement to the garden and a few varieties that i've grown that i love are purple illusion the color of purple on that one it's just like a almost like a periwinkle lavender kind of blend i don't know it's very soft and very beautiful i've grown wizard of oz which is a deep purple white wands has been an amazing performer in our garden i have it in several locations because i find that like with veronica i always thought you needed to share them back after their first bloom which you definitely can do and let them come back for their second bloom i just leave mine alone and they always have blooms on them they always have honeybees all over them and i just get i have interest bloom interest all throughout the entire year with those there's also a pink one called pink potion and the other interesting thing about them zone four through eight deer resistant they're a smaller statured perennial so good for the edge of a border but i found when i went to go clean mine out one year that there were ladybug larva everywhere on my veronica and i don't know if you guys have found that on your veronicas and it's not every year i found that but i didn't know that they hosted ladybugs like that and there was no aphids on these plants there must have been aphids nearby but i left them alone because i thought if they are playing host to a beneficial like a ladybug that's amazing i'm going to leave these just let them be now for the shade loving perennials number one on my list are hostas hostas are easy to find they are very common but there are hundreds of varieties so if you were to get into hostas and want to do a collection it would probably take a good long time to find all of the hostas that are out there and available and i doubt it i would even have enough space to house all of them there are so many but they come in lots of different sizes and leaf structures and leaf colors as well from ones that stay very miniature to ones that get massive there are some that are like ribbon shaped so like like curly ribbon ribbonesque looking hostas they're really interesting looking the thing i like about them is that they're one of the first shade perennials that comes up in the spring for us you see the little leaves all curled coming out of the ground and it's always so exciting i like that you don't have to fuss with them in terms of i mean they just grow and the only thing i have to do is once their bloom stock is done blooming i cut it off and that's usually mid-summer and a lot of times we're not growing them for their blooms we're growing them rather for their leaf structure so you can clip off their bloom stocks at any point but they do attract hummingbirds if you leave them on i know a lot of people deal with slugs and snails and we do have a little bit of slug issues in our area and i just use bug and slug killer just kind of make it a habit to go around the plant every once in a while my all my hostas and just sprinkle a little bit of it even preventatively to keep them away the only other thing that i've seen affect hostas in my area is the the uh rare occasion of a hail storm that comes through i think it's happened once in like the last 10 years we had a hail storm come through in may and it just ripped the leaves of our hostas the plants are totally fine though super tough you cut off the affected leaves and they'll push new ones but that's rare thankfully a few that i have in my garden that i love are the coast coast hosta we've planted a few of those in our front garden underneath a crab apple tree and they have very bold like chartreuse almost gold looking leaves and they're kind of corrugated looking like they're ribbed i guess you could say but i just like how big they get and i like how big their leaves are because i love to have that bold structure in that area i had like some hearty geranium that had very like a smaller foliage there's some snowflakes that had strappy kind of grassy leaf foliage so to have all those different structures in one area is a really good look a couple other ones we've got empress woos which get massive i think that's the largest known hosta available on the market i think anyway it grows about three to four feet tall five to six feet wide i have learned that if you want hostas to get that big they do need a lot of water so it's not like i can run our normal drip system by the big hostas i have to give them our regular drip system plus individual emitters to their root system to make sure they stay very hydrated because that is a lot of leaf to feed you know you have a root system taking up water to feed these enormous leaves it takes quite a bit there's the wu lala which is a kind of a sport or a sister plant or whatever of empress wu in that it's got the same size but it has a variegated leaf and i've got those planted as well a few more that i love are we hosta and that one comes up in fact i just posted a picture of one of them when they come up they've got they're a smaller um a smaller hosta but their leaves are very ruffled and kind of curly and variegated and they're a really fun one to watch grow there's diamond lake which is a blue hosta it only grows about 17 inches tall but it gets 45 inches wide so it's just like this enormous kind of like almost ground cover-ish hosta i think that's a really neat kind of growth structure and then of course there's autumn frost which i've used in a ton of different applications all over in our landscape in containers they are really consistent like they come back no matter what i do it seems like they are just there they are every single spring and they're very bright they've got a very bright yellow variegation number two are brunera and they're an amazing perennial through the entire growing season their leaves are beautiful they're heart-shaped there's lots of different varieties in this category as well so you may find one like jack of diamonds that gets leaves that are nine to ten inches wide like big and then you'll find other ones like i've got some silver hearts planted that stay a little bit smaller but have heavier silver variegation so they'll all be a little bit different in leaf size and how much silver you see on their leaves they all bloom in the spring so they send up blooms that are uh kind of forget-me-not-esque they're little and like kind of in sprays and light blue ours are glorious right now but i don't even like they're beautiful in bloom but even when the blooms are done i don't even miss the blooms because i love that leaf structure so much it kind of gives you that hosta vibe while looking quite a bit different they're fairly cold hardy too most of the varieties go down to a zone three and they're tolerant of high ph soil which i always appreciate in any plant number three is hakana khloa or japanese forest grass and i've heard it pronounced differently and i can't remember the different pronunciation at the moment it's interesting to hear different regional pronunciations mine's probably wrong either way it's a beautiful perennial grass that really loves a shady position there's a couple different varieties that i have in my garden there's one called areola which is a variegated type so it's yellow white and pink variegation they form these mounds that are so graceful looking they're so soft and they just they're stunning they are stunning plants especially when you put them up like if you put them up next to a really bold pasta then you've got this really kind of ferny just beautiful grass i love them there's the all gold as well which is an all kind of a chartreusey green yellow leaf instead of having a variegated leaf and both grow into this beautiful mound they kind of spread around a little bit but they're not aggressive and a lot of times like in a woodland garden situation you kind of like want things to naturalize a little bit but it's not going to take over to where it's a problem they are a zone five through nine and i do find that they take a little bit longer to break dormancy in the spring so it's one that you kind of have to be a little bit patient with number four is lungwort or pulmonary is a botanical name i've got a variety called spot on planted in my garden as well as some of the older varieties and i don't even know the variety names for those there are several different ones in this category but they all kind of have the same look a little bit reminiscent of the brennera in that they have the green leaf with the silver overlay silver variegation but the leaf structure is different so brenner i have the large heart shaped leaf this one the pulmonary is like a little bit more elongated they both bloom in the spring so pulmonary when they come up with their bloom sprays the buds are a salmon pink and when they open it's a rich blue so it looks like this plant has two different kinds of flowers on it at any given time in the spring because you're seeing both pink and blue and i find that so interesting um they're not an enormous growing plant i want to say like oh boy a little bit above a foot maybe 14 to 16 inches tall 20 inches wide i've got my planted at the edge of a border and i find even after they're done blooming lovely structure throughout the whole year they are tolerant of high ph too which i really like and they do attract bees and butterflies and number five on my list of shade loving perennials is of course hellebores you've got to have hell of wash in your garden i just they're such an amazing perennial plant they're the type that come out in the late winter start to bloom and they bloom all through this spring might hold on to their blooms for most of the summer i don't even cut the bloom stocks off because even though the blooms they start to kind of lose their color and fade a little bit they're still a beautiful structure and then you've got leaves that are semi-evergreen i would call them in milder climates they'll be beautiful and beautiful evergreen uh leaves in my area where it gets a little bit colder by the end of the winter they're looking a little rough and need to be cut off but it's still structure for most of the winter looking pretty good there are so many different varieties i think i've got roughly 40 some 42 varieties in my garden and there will never be a time i don't think where i have every single variety that exists there are so many but they do make for a pretty good cut flower they typically stay in the one to two foot tall and wide range zone five through nine and de-resistant now we're gonna move into our category of perennials that like both sun and shade so kind of a part sun part shade sort of situation and i find that you can kind of depending on your soil type and how much water it holds onto and if it's morning sun versus afternoon sun you can kind of mess with these five perennials in different areas of your garden and see what works the best but number one on my list are hearty geraniums i love pretty much any hearty geranium that exists out there they are such a workhorse in terms of they come out it seems like earlier than most other perennials like their growth is so much that if you've got a lot of spring bulbs in the garden and they're starting to decline like tulip foliage is looking bad daffodils are starting to die back it seems like the geraniums are big enough at that point that they're already starting to cover those leaves so you're not noticing them as much which i really do like they are drought tolerant once established deer and rabbit resistant most of them color up beautifully in the fall and most of them bloom from late spring all the way through fall they're also tolerant of high ph soils and they're not prone to any insect or disease issues like get this plant for your garden they're amazing i've got several different varieties in our garden one is called boom chocolata and i love it it's got dark bronze colored leaves with really pretty like clear lavender purple flowers and i just like that it's a different foliage color i like that it's not just green i mean you can get green varieties too but there are a lot of different options for darker colors there is the magnificum variety which has the purple blooms big purple blooms and then the leaves which are green in season turn red in the fall there's ann folkerd which is a really popular one has bright pink blooms and it's got more like deeply cut leaves and it seems like that one wants to almost ground cover a little bit but it's not one that runs away with itself it doesn't take over a space but plants like that i wouldn't even quite mind because it seems like they're always in bloom and that one turns a beautiful color leaf color in the fall as well there's also johnson's blue which is a beautiful blue blooming one i've got one that up in the front garden here that one's got kind of deeply cut leaves i could go on in this category for a really long time number two is ladies mantle or alca melamolis i love this one for the leaf structure in particular their leaves are kind of rounded and scalloped on the edge they look really pretty with water droplets in the middle you know how lupins if you've ever seen a lupine with water droplets in it this is kind of the same effect and if you put it in your garden you will know what i'm talking about they're so they're just like little cups they're just beautiful they bloom sprays of chartreuse green yellow blooms and when they're done blooming you can either cut the bloom stock off or shear them all the way off at the ground and let them grow back fresh it doesn't take them very long to rebound from that shear but they just are a very fresh looking perennial and in a spot like they can take morning sun beautifully and then just a little bit of protection in the afternoon here in our area our sun is pretty harsh but if you give them enough moisture they can also take that afternoon sun a bit as well they're also deer and rabbit resistant in a zone three through eight number three is carex and there's lots of different kinds of carrots they're an ornamental grass most of which are on the smaller side and as opposed to like the hakana chlora which we just talked about how kind of chloe is a little bit more soft and like willowy carricks is a little bit more stiff i guess you could say but they kind of still have the same vibe carricks can take more sun the evergold variety has a yellow variegation kind of down the center of the leaf and then it sends out blooms in the spring that are coffee colored and i think they're just so pretty zone five through ten and a semi evergreen two i think in more mild climates you get away with having them all year round in my area it seems like some years i'm cutting them all the way back and letting them come back and other years like this year we had a very mild winter and i'm just having to do a little bit of cleanup around the base and that's it and the top looks beautiful and it did all winter long number four are penstemon and they are such a wonderful perennial in fact they are native in my area i'm working on putting together a specific wildflower mix to put in our orchard and there are so many penstemons that are native to dry high desert eastern oregon so they really do perform well for us in our garden there's a variety called midnight masquerade that has done so so well for us it has kind of a reddish like burgundy reddish green leaves but kind of bi-color and they form this beautiful tuft at the base of leaves and then they send their bloom stocks up and their blooms are like a lavender color with a white throat they last for a really long time good cut flower but i leave the bloom stocks up even after they're done because they form the most gorgeous little seed pods and i use those as fillers and flower arrangements all the time so they are clearly tolerant of high ph i mean you have to be to be a native in the area where i live uh the midnight mass grade variety grows quite tall like if you include the bloom stocks i would say like three and a half feet maybe 36 to 40 inches tall and then just a foot and a half two foot spread on that there are lots of other varieties i've grown electric blue which stays quite a bit smaller i want to say like 15 inches tall and wide but i think if you can get a hold of any kind of penstemon it's worth putting them in your garden and again mine can take the full on morning sun a little bit of protection in the afternoon as long as they have ample water they do really well in a full sun location even in the afternoon and number five on my part shade part sun list are japanese anemones and there are a few different varieties that i've grown in the past that are really nice they do like the older varieties do spread quite quickly so you want to be aware of that there is a new variety called fallen love sweetly it's not new now it's new several years ago but i've grown it for several years now both in containers and in the ground it stays a little bit shorter more compact it spreads a little bit but not nothing like the older varieties that you really just want to put them in a place where they can just do their thing or you have to be willing to just go out and try to control them a bit um they are really pretty their leaf structure is wonderful their flowers are gorgeous usually like late summer through fall is when their bloom time happens fall in love sweetly have the really clear pink blooms with the yellow center and then there's another variety and i don't even know if i'm going to say this right it's like honoring joe bear i know that's probably wrong but it's a white bloom a taller variety one of the older traditional ones and some of those things we just carry from like our childhood i feel like it's kind of like ladies mantle my parents always had like a lot of ladies mantle so that one's always been such a um nostalgic plant for me just like the white anemone is my parents still have a big drift of them and i just absolutely love them they have a delicate kind of magical vibe to them and their leaves stay a little bit lower while their bloom stalks come up and on the taller ones their bloom stock is longer and it kind of like they sway in the breeze a little bit more and you can almost tuck them behind other things and just see the blooms come up and not really even see any of the leaves and then you can have another layer of something right in front of them i think they're really versatile that way fall in love sweetly gets about like 20 to 24 26 inches tall and maybe a couple feet wide so it is quite a bit more compact but all of them are tolerant of high ph soils deer and rabbit resistant if that's something that you deal with and they're just an overall really great perennial and that's it you guys those are 15 perennials that i think are workhorses in the garden that i feel like no garden should be without you know it's fun to try out new stuff and to constantly just like kind of keep up with those really fun varieties that are you're seeing in magazines and seeing online and really wanting to try but also to have things in your garden that you know will perform from year to year for me like i need to know that there's stuff in my garden that's gonna that they're just gonna do well no matter what i do to them they're just gonna do well i mean so long as you give them the right light requirements and and so forth um they're gonna like you for it and i feel like these 15 groups of plants and the specific varieties i shared today are ones that have been those wonderful plants for me in my garden so anyway i hope that this video was helpful especially to those of you who are just beginning out in your garden journey and you're not really sure what to put where and what kind of things are the best i mean this is certainly not a comprehensive list there's a ton of wonderful plants out there but i just thought this might get you guys started so anyway thank you guys so much for watching this video and we will see you in the next one bye

Channel: Proven Winners

Views: 94,992

Rating: 4.9681726 out of 5

Keywords: Proven Winners, gardener, garden, Variety (Organism Classification Rank), Flowering Plant (Organism Classification), flower

Id: DUn7_oXygQk

Length: 26min 20sec (1580 seconds)

Published: Sun May 23 2021