by Diane Sagers
CORRESPONDENT
In planning gardens beds, gardeners often wonder how to create a beautiful scene without having to spend day and night there -- sleeping bags and all. If only there were a way to make gardening stay done. What if you could plant the garden once and the plants would just stay put, grow nicely and look good pretty much forever?
With that in mind, many of us opt for perennials. They grow year after year without replanting. It sounds really good on paper.
Creating a perennial garden may be a good idea. Then again it may not. Before planting a perennial garden consider several important items.
Evaluate growing conditions
What are your growing conditions like? Is your ground ready? Is it fertile, loose and well-composted? Do you have perennial weeds under control?
After you put perennial plants in place, it is difficult to change soil structure. If the soil is well-prepared and if it has been improved by the addition of compost so that it is soft and workable, you can continue to improve it by using mulches and allowing them to decompose into the soil thereafter. However, if it is hard, with poor drainage and low fertility, the plants will struggle. It is very difficult to incorporate organic matter around established roots.
Weeds will always be with us, but if you have difficult-to-control weeds or perennial weeds such as field bind weed (wild morning glory) or quack grass you may find them very difficult to control without damaging the perennial plants. Although we worry a lot about insect pests, weeds are a much bigger problem. They are everywhere, and they steal nutrients and water and they shade the desired plants.
Allow a year or improve your soil and get control of weeds before you set out a perennial bed.
All perennial beds are not created equally beautiful. Prepare a plan choosing plants that grow well in your growing conditions and choose them for orchestrated bloom.
Look beyond blossoms
Most perennials do not bloom all season, but with care you can have something of interest -- possibly blooming -- all season long.
Some perennials entire claim to fame is that they keep growing. However, some perennials are great bloomers and some are great plants. Those are the ones you want to purchase.
Look them over and make an educated decision. Everyone has his or her own favorites. Find plants that have a flower you like and that will continue to be an attractive plant when not in bloom. Look beyond blossoms for another reason to include a plant in your landscape. Do plants have an interesting structure and texture? Do they grow to the right size to fit the space you have for them?
Shade versus sun
Consider the sun and shade requirements in your garden and choose your plants accordingly. Shade-loving plants growing in sun will be short-lived and look pretty sorry the entire time they are growing. The same is true of sun-loving plants that are given too much shade.
Keep in mind that some plants that will grow in full sun at a lower altitude, or in an area that is cloudy much of the time, may need the protection of a little shade with our thinner, dry air and long stretches of bright, sunny days. Many of the perennials we purchase are raised in the Northwest. The tags they put on the plants reflect the growing environment there. A plant growing in "full sun" is actually growing there in an overcast environment much of the time although it is not in shade.
Check references for our growing conditions. In some cases you may just have to try a plant in a certain area and realize that you need to move it to a better place.
The term "full sun" means an area that is not shaded at all. Partial shade refers to a filtered canopy or sunlight for about six hours per day -- ideally the morning hours. Full shade means the plant should be under a dense canopy or exposed to sunlight less than six hours each day. Also consider heat conditions. Is the area near rock or brick walls and pavement that will reflect and amplify heat?
There are some sun-lovers that will take as much sun as you can provide. Among these are succulents and centaurea.
Shade-lovers include primroses, lungwort, tradescantia (Spiderwort), hosta and others. The shady areas we plant tend to be moist as well. Lammium and lamiastrum are two of only a few plants that adapt best to areas that are both shady and dry. Oregon grape takes a little more sun, but also adapts to dry, filtered shade.
The upside to perennials
The advantages of perennials are many. They are becoming much more popular because so many new ones go on the market each year. They are much more readily available because they can be propagated much more easily through cloning.
Although you may pay more for a perennial initially, they may be less expensive over the long haul if you care for them properly.
They may save work, but in reality they often require about as much work as annuals. The advantage is that the work is spread over the season. You invest a good deal of time in the spring preparing soil and planting or transplanting annuals, but once you have them in place and they fill in, they don't require too much care.
Perennials, on the other hand, may require digging and dividing, pruning and shaping and possibly extra weed control.
They do provide colors and varieties that you may not find in annuals. If you plant carefully, the landscape will change throughout the year as the various plants come into bloom and change form.
Once they are established, perennials may require less water than annuals. Very few annuals grow in our area without added water, but a number of perennials lend themselves to xeriscape. Xeric plants need plenty of water for a year or two to become established, but they adapt to low water conditions.