15 Perennials Every Garden Should Have!

Hi guys, how do you do? Today I want to talk about 15 different types of

perennials

, just those types that are robust, like Workhorse

perennials

, they add a lot to the

garden

without needing a lot of care and I think

every

garden

should

have

them. and I've grown each of the varieties I'm about to share in this video and they're all pretty easy to find too, so I'm going to break this down into three categories; there will be five perennials that like full sun, five that like shade and then five that like something in between, so let's start with the full sun ones, first number one are the sedums and if you want a perennial low maintenance this is probably the best on my list in fact if you

have

a spot that is really hard to grow anything else sedums are amazing they come in so many different growth patterns like growth habits there are types of ground cover that grow upright, many different Leaf structure Leaf color Flowering color, you don't have to cut them.

They are deer resistant. They are drought tolerant. They don't want to be fertilized. It's basically like standing me up and leaving me alone and letting me be beautiful. In fact, if these plants get too much love, they'll show it to you. If they get too much water with fertilizer or not enough light they will fall over so they are one of those guys that I love putting in flower beds and I know I have a hard time getting water into that area or the soil is just really not great , Sedum is always what I lean on first.

Some really amazing varieties I've grown in my garden. Lemon Jade is probably one of my favorites. It grows about 18 inches tall and a couple of feet wide in zone three to nine and coming. It comes up with this kind of sage green, medium green leaf and then when it starts to bloom it's like a creamy color on the top and then the flowers are yellow instead of pink so it's a really cool look. beautiful and vibrant in the garden. and I never cut my sedums or almost never cut them in the fall because they are so strong their stems are strong and they can withstand quite a bit of snow and they just look like beautiful winter structures so you have their beautiful growth in the spring and then you can join them , enjoy them all winter and there is only a brief moment after cutting them in late winter before their spring growth emerges that you don't actually see. them, so they're really of multi-season interest, there's a very varied ground cover called Boogie Woogie that I planted, I actually planted it in a landscape that we did a project on last year and then I have some in my own garden and looks great in pots too if you are doing mixed arrangements of succulents and succulents, the Boogie Woogie is really pretty and has yellow flowers and then like a green leaf with a cream variegated or a creamy yellow variegated that looks beautiful spilling over the side of one other couple of upright containers that I really love and have grown over the years are Autumn joy and that one that was super popular, you can find it at a lot of different garden centers, it's kind of an old standby and it has leaves greens, a beautiful pink color.

It blooms deeply in a reddish mauve like color in the fall and I use them in fall arrangements all the time and then there is one called Autumn charm which is a sport of Autumn Joy, it has the same flowering structure and growth habit, but has the Variegated leaves number two are Russian sage and this is another one that reacts a little like Sedum in the garden. You want to place it somewhere that is in full sun, as if it doesn't have very good soil, it doesn't need a ton of water once it is there. established and will do the same as sowing them well.

If you get too much of any of them, you'll see it start to fail, but the one strain that I've really loved for the last I don't know, three, four years. I've been growing it, it's called Denim and Lace, it doesn't get as big as traditional varieties so it's about 28 to 32 inches tall, about two and a half feet wide and is a very dense growing perennial. . The heirloom varieties are beautiful and like the taller ones, the flowering spikes are a little more open so you can see a little more aeration through the heirloom varieties. This one is a little more compact and the blue rooms are a little deeper and it starts flowering in mid-summer when

every

thing starts to bloom. calm and lasts all fall for us and I love the fact that I can trim it and it comes back fresh next year, so it makes it very easy to use even in a formal garden situation, which is where I have ours planted, too They are deer and rabbit resistant, just like lavender, and I don't even know why I didn't give it its own category, so I'm grouping it with Russian sage just because we're the same color, blue.

Lavender is amazing and doesn't require much attention. Plant in a well-drained location in full sun and it will work for you. We've been growing a couple different varieties. Romance is a smaller stature lavender flower, 12 to 18 inches tall and wide, very dark in color, which I like because I like to dry lavender and, you know, when you dry flowers, it usually loses a little color since this begins much deeper. It already has color, it is a very beautiful dried flower and then we also grow munstead, which grows a little more. We have that lining a walkway up to our back porch and, wow, I mean it reaches a couple feet high and maybe two.

It is about a foot and a half wide and the flowers are a little thinner and a little lighter. Color number three is rude. Becky has such black eyes. Susans are an amazing perennial and I feel like they are so normal. It's a normal perennial, but it looks a lot like my garden when they start blooming. I wonder why I haven't planted more each year. They come out again in the middle of summer and start putting on their show. There's no need. They kill them and sit there looking beautiful until a hard frost takes them away.

There are many different varieties of redbeckia. They are deer resistant and juglin tolerant. So if you have black walnut trees nearby, you can plant rebeccias and they will work for you. Ok, there is an heirloom variety called golden storm that is available and easy to find, and I highly recommend placing it in your garden. I feel like it's a good second layer plant, like if you have a flower bed, you know, you plant it in a row. back so you can plant a bunch of something else a little shorter. I think they grow two feet tall, golden storm, so to plant something a little shorter right in front of it, you have kind of a beautiful bright color. perennial that appears behind something else, but there are many other varieties of Rebecca out there, many colors definitely check the growing zone and make sure it matches yours or will survive in yours because there are some tender varieties that you

should

pay attention to attention. because, however, I think even the tender varieties are worth growing every year because they grow so big and produce so many flowers that it's worth it, so I grow Cherry Brandy every year and it's a beautiful burgundy color, it's actually a zone five and there is also one called Irish.

The eyes I really like are yellow, they're a little more like a lemon yellow petal with a green eye and they're really interesting looking. Rudbeckia number four are coneflowers that are generally found in the zone four to nine range, they are deer resistant. I love the sun, tons of different growth habits and colors, so you will find some that grow taller if you want to put some type of backing from the edge of your border. There are some that are very short and you can put them right in the front. I think they are also a beautiful container choice because they bloom throughout most of the summer and have such a beautiful flowering structure.

I think they are excellent for that purpose. They are also a type of perennial plant. along with Rebecca is that I usually don't cut them in the fall because they look so beautiful during the winter. I mean if you feel the need to make a flower arrangement you can go out and cut off one of the seed heads and they bring very interesting color and texture to your arrangement and they also provide a lot of forage for wildlife so you will find some like the traditional looking Echinacea purpurea, the traditional echinacea that is that purplish pink that grows a little bit taller than you.

I find it like a double scoop blueberry. I planted some of those last spring or the spring before, but they are the double pom pom type, so they have this huge pom pom on the top and then the petals around the pom pom type. facing down just very interesting, it looks yellow, honey, I have a lot of those in my garden, very light yellow. I just transplanted a bunch of mine around the front of our gazebo this spring and they haven't missed a beat. They are already growing as if they were originally planted in that place, which makes me very happy.

The price is white. It is a beautiful white coneflower. I think one grows about 20 inches tall and has a huge cone in the center. You will find that some varieties of Echinacea have a sort of huge seed head shaped cone in the middle and some are a little bit smaller and I particularly like that one and the price is white because it has a lot of orange in it and I don't know if it just contrasts very okay with the white petals or whatever, but it's a beautiful mix and one that I always loved is Green Envy, so the petals start off pink right in the center and then turn into a really beautiful green and the last one. one in the full sun category are Veronicas Veronicas are my favorite.

I love flowers that have that long, spiky look. I think it adds movement to the garden and some varieties I've grown and love are a purple illusion. the purple color in that one is almost like a kind of periwinkle lavender mix. I don't know, it's very soft and very beautiful. I have grown the Wizard of Oz, which is a deep purple white wand. It's been an amazing performer in our garden I have it in several places because I think, like with Veronica, I always thought you needed to share them after their first bloom, which you can definitely do and let them come back for their second bloom.

I just leave mine alone and they always have flowers, they always have bees everywhere and I understand that I have an interest in blooming all year round, with those there is also a rose called rose potion and the other interesting thing about them, zone four to eight , deer resistant. It's a smaller perennial, in stature, very good for edging a border, but when I went to clean mine one year I discovered that there were ladybug larvae everywhere on my Veronica and I don't know if you have found that in your Veronicas and not every year I came across that, but I didn't know they housed ladybugs like that and there were no aphids on these plants.

It's possible that there should have been aphids nearby, but I left it alone because I figured if they host a beneficial one like a ladybug, that's awesome. I'm going to leave them, let them be now for shade loving perennials, number one on my list, they are hostas. Hostas are easy to find, they are very common, but there are hundreds of varieties, so if you wanted to. getting into hostas and wanting to make a collection, it would probably take a long time to find all the hostas that are available and I doubt it, I would even have enough space to house them all, there are so many but they come in many different sizes, leaf structures and leaf colors , from the ones that stay miniature to the ones that become huge, there are some that are ribbon-shaped, like a curly ribbon, ribbon-like hostas, they have a really interesting look, um.

What I like about them is that they are one of the first shade perennials to emerge in the spring. You see their little curly leaves coming out of the ground and it's always so exciting. I like that you don't have to worry about them in terms of, I mean, they just grow and the only thing I have to do is once their flowering material has finished blooming, I cut it off and that's usually in the middle of summer and many Sometimes we don't grow them for their flowers, we are growing them more for their leaf structure, so you can cut their flowers at any time, but they attract hummingbirds if you leave them on.

I know a lot of people deal with slugs and snails and we have a bit of a slug problem in our area and I only use insecticide and slug killer, I just get into the habit of going around the plant every once in a while with all my hostas and spraying a little, even so preventive, to keep them away. Another thing I have seen affect hostas in my area is the rare occasion that a hail storm comes through and I think it has happened once in the last 10 years, we had a hail storm in May and it just ripped the leaves off our hostas, the plants are totally fine, although they are very resistant.

Cut off the affected leaves and new ones will be removed. But that's rare, luckily some that I have in my garden that I love are the coast to coast hostas that we have. I planted some of those in our front yard under an apple treewild and they have very bold leaves, like chartreuse, almost golden, and they're a little corrugated, like they're ribbed, I guess you could say, but I like how big they get. and I like how big their leaves are because I love having that bold structure in that area. I had like an abundant geranium that had very little foliage.

There are some snowflakes that had strappy herbaceous leaf foliage to have all those different structures. In one area it looks very good, a couple of others we have Empress Woos, which turn out huge. I believe it is the largest known hosta available on the market. I think it grows three to four feet tall and five to six feet wide anyway. I learned that if you want hostas to grow that big, they need a lot of water, so it's not like I can get our normal drip system to work with large 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 there are a lot of leaves to feed.

You know you have a root system that takes in water to feed these huge leaves. It takes quite a bit. There is wulala, which is a kind of sport or sister plant. or whatever from Empress Wu as it is the same size but has a variegated leaf and I have them planted too, a few more that I love, we are Hosta and that one is featured, in fact I just posted a photo of one. Of them, when they emerge, are a smaller hosta, but their leaves are very curled and a little curly and variegated, and it is very fun to watch their growth.

There's Diamond Lake, which is a blue hosta. It only grows about 17 inches tall but reaches 45 inches wide, so it's like this huge type of hosta that almost covers the ground. I think it's a really elegant kind of growth structure and then of course there's Autumn Frost which I've used in a bunch of different applications throughout our containerized landscape, they're really consistent, like they come back no matter what I do, It seems like they are just there, they are there every spring and they are very bright, they have a very bright shine. The number two yellow variety is bronero and is an amazing perennial throughout the growing season.

Its leaves are beautiful. They are heart shaped. There are also many different varieties in this category so you may find one like the Jack of Diamonds which has leaves that are nine to ten inches wide as large and then you will find others like I have some silver hearts planted that stay a bit smaller but they have a more intense silver variety so they will all be a little different in the size of the leaves and how much silver you see in their leaves, they all bloom in the spring so they send out flowers that are like forget me nots, They're small and spray-like and light blue, ours are glorious right now, but I'm not.

I don't even like that they are beautiful in bloom, but even when the flowers are finished, I don't even miss them because I love the structure of the leaves so much that it gives you that hosta vibe while they look a little different, they are quite also. cold heart, most varieties go down to zone three and are tolerant of high ph soils, what I always appreciate in any number three plant is hakanakloa or Japanese forest grass and I've heard it pronounced differently and I can't. I even remember the different pronunciation at this time. It is interesting to hear different regional pronunciations.

Mine is probably wrong either way. It is a beautiful perennial herb that really loves a shady location. There are a couple different varieties that I have in my garden. There is one called Ariola that is variegated. type, so it's a variety of yellow, white and pink, they form these mounds that look so elegant, they're so soft and just stunning, they're stunning plants, especially when you put them next to a really bold plant. hosta, then you have this type of fern with a beautiful herb. I love them. It's also all gold, which is kind of a yellowish green leaf instead of having a variegated leaf and they both grow in this beautiful amount. they spread a little bit, but they're not aggressive and a lot of times, like in a woodland garden situation, you want things to naturalize a little bit, but it won't spread to where it's a problem. a zone five to nine and I find that they take a little bit longer to break dormancy in the spring, so it's a zone where you have to be a little patient with number four, pulmonary or pulmonary wart, it's a botanical name.

I have a variety called spot on planted in my garden as well as some of the older varieties and I don't even know the names of the varieties. There are several different ones in this category, but they all look a bit the same. It reminds a bit of the brunnera and that they have a green leaf with a silvery silver layer, but the structure of the leaf is different, so in Brenner I have the large heart-shaped leaf, this one, the lung one, is like a little more elongated , both bloom. Spring, so pull them out of the area when they come out with their Bloom sprays, the buds are salmon pink and when they open they are a deep blue, so it looks like this plant has two different types of flowers at any given time. spring because you're seeing pink and blue and I find it very interesting that they're not a huge growing plant.

I mean, oh boy, a little over a foot, maybe 14 to 16 inches tall and 20 inches wide. mine is planted on the edge of a border and I find that even after they finish flowering I love the structure of the leaves all year round, they are tolerant of high PH2 which I really like and they attract bees and butterflies, and they are number five on my list of Shade-loving perennials are, of course, hellebores. You have to have worse things in your garden. There is simply an amazing perennial plant. They are the type that come out in late winter, begin to bloom, and bloom all spring.

I could hold on. its flowers for most of the summer I don't even cut the flowers because, although the flowers start to lose their color and fade a little, they are still a beautiful structure and then you have leaves that are semi-evergreen, I would call them milder climates, they will be beautiful and beautiful. The evergreen leaves in my area where it is a little colder at the end of winter look a little rough and need to be trimmed, but it still has structure for most of the winter and looks pretty good, there are so many different varieties.

I think I have about 40-42 varieties in my garden and there will never be a time when I don't have every variety out there, there are a lot, but they make a pretty good cut flower. They typically stay in the one to two foot tall, wide range five to nine zone and are deer resistant. Now let's move on to our category of perennials that like both. sun and shade, kind of a half sun and half shade situation, and I think you can depend on the type of soil and how much water it holds, and if it's morning sun versus afternoon sun, you can alter these five plant perennials in different areas of your garden and see which one works best.

Number one on my list are hearty geraniums. I love almost every hearty geranium out there. They are a workhorse in terms of coming out, it seems like before. Most other perennials like their growth so much that if you have a lot of spring bulbs in the garden and they are starting to thin out like the tulip foliage is looking bad, the daffodils are starting to die, it seems like geraniums are large enough. at this point they are already starting to cover those leaves, so you don't notice them as much, which I really like. They are drought tolerant once established, deer and rabbit resistant, most of them color beautifully in the fall and most of them.

They bloom from late spring until Paul, they are also tolerant of high pH soils and are not prone to any insect or disease problems, so get this plant for your garden. They are incredible. I have several different varieties in our The one in the garden is called boom chocolata and I love it, it has dark bronze leaves with very pretty flowers, like light lavender purple, and I just like that it has 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's the magnificum variety which has purple flowers, big purple flowers and then the leaves that are green and the season they turn red in the fall, there is Ann folkard, which is very popular, it has bright pink flowers. and she has more like deeply cut leaves and it looks like you want to almost cover the ground a little but it's not one that escapes on its own it doesn't take up space but plants like that I wouldn't even mind. because it seems like they are always in blue and that turns into a beautiful color.

The leaf color in the fall is also Johnson's blue, which is a beautiful blooming blue color. I have one here in the front yard and he is friendly. of deeply cut leaves I could go on in this category of cakes for a long time. Number two is the lady's mantle or alchemyla malice. I love this one for the structure of the leaves in particular, its leaves are a little rounded and scalloped on the edge, they look very pretty. with drops of water in the middle, you know what lupins are like, if you have ever seen a lupine with drops of water, this is the same effect and if you put it in your garden you will know what I am talking about.

So they're like little cups, they're just beautiful, they bloom in sprays of yellow chartreuse flowers and when they're done blooming you can cut the flowers off or cut them completely to the ground and let them grow back. fresh, it doesn't take them long to recover from that clear, but they are just a very cool looking perennial and in a spot like this they can take in the morning sun beautifully and then just a little bit of afternoon protection here in our area . The sun is pretty harsh, but if you give them enough moisture they can also handle a little bit of afternoon sun, they are also resistant to deer and rabbits and a zone three to eight number three is Carex and there are many different types of carrots. an ornamental grass, most of which are smaller and, unlike the hakana chlora, which we just talked about, Chloe is a little softer and, like willow carrix, is a little stiffer, I suppose it is I might say, but They still have the same vibe, but Carricks can get more sun.

The Evergold variety has a yellow variegation in the center of the leaf and then sends out flowers in the spring that are brown and I think they are so pretty. nice zone five to ten and also semi-perennial. I think in milder climates you can have them all year round in my area. It seems like some years I cut them off completely and let them come back in others. In years like this we had a very mild winter and I just have to clean a little around the bottom and that's it, and the top looks beautiful and it did all winter.

All four of them are penstemon and they are so wonderful. Perennials, in fact, are native to my area. I am working on preparing a specific mix of wildflowers to put in our garden and there are a lot of penstemons that are native to the dry desert of eastern Oregon, so they really work well for us in our garden. There is a variety called Midnight Masquerade that It has done so well for us that it has reddish green leaves like burgundy, but somewhat bicolor and they form this beautiful tuft at the base of the leaves and then send their flowers upwards. and its flowers are like a lavender color with a white throat, they last a long time, good cut flower, but I leave the flowers even after I'm done because they form the most beautiful little seed pods and I use them as fillers and flower arrangements all the time, so they are clearly tolerant of high ph so maybe you have to be to be native to the area where I live, the midnight masquerade variety grows quite tall, if you include the flower stock I would say about three and a half foot such Sometimes 36 to 40 inches tall and then just a foot and a half two feet spread, there are many other varieties that I have grown that are electric blue, that stay a little smaller, I mean like 15 inches tall and wide, but I think you can get any type of penstemon, they are worth putting in your garden and again mine can get some morning sun and a little afternoon protection, as long as they have enough water they do very well. in a location with full sun even in the afternoon and number five on my part shade and sun list are Japanese anemones and there are a few different varieties that I have grown in the past that are really nice, they like the older varieties they spread quite a bit. quickly, so you should be aware that there is a new variety called love sweetly, it's not new now, it's new several years ago, but I've grown it for several years both in containers and in the ground, it keeps a bit.

Shorter, more compact, spreads a little bit, but nothing like the older varieties where you really just want to put them in a place where they can do their thing or you have to be willing to go out and try to control them a little bit. arereally pretty, the structure of their leaves is wonderful, their flowers are beautiful, generally from late summer to autumn, that is when their flowering season occurs, they fall in love sweetly, they have a very light pink flower with a yellow center and then there are another variety and I don't even know that if I'm going to say this right, it's like honoring Joe Bear.

I know it's probably wrong, but it's a white flower, a taller variety, one of the oldest and most traditional, and some of those things would just be preserved as they were in our childhood. I feel like it's kind of like a lady's mantle that my parents always had like a bunch of lady's mantle, so one has always been such a nostalgic plant for me, just like the white anemone, my parents still have a big tendency .of them and I absolutely love them, they have a delicate kind of magical vibration and their leaves stay a little lower while their flowers go up and on the higher ones their flowers are longer and it's like they sway in the breeze. a little bit more and you can almost hide them behind other things and just watch the flowers emerge and not even see the leaves and then you can have another layer of something right in front of them.

I think they are really versatile. That way, Enamorate dulcemente is between 20 and 24 26 inches tall and maybe a couple of feet wide, so it's a little more compact, but they all tolerate high pH soils, resistant to deer and rabbits, if that It's something you deal with. and overall they are a really great perennial plant and that's it guys those are 15 perennials that I think are workhorses in the garden and I feel like no garden should be without you. They know it's fun to try new things and just constantly like them. It's like keeping up with those really fun varieties that you see in magazines and online and you really want to try, but also having things in your garden that you know will work year after year for me, like I need to know.

There are things in my garden that will do well, no matter what I do to them, they will do well. I mean, as long as you give them the right light requirements, etc., they'll like it. I appreciate it and I feel like these 15 groups of plants and the specific varieties that I shared today are what have been those wonderful plants for me and my garden, so anyway I hope this video was helpful, especially for those of you who They are just starting. on your gardening trip and you're not really sure what to put where and what kinds of things are best.

I mean, this isn't a complete list, there are a lot of wonderful plants out there, but I thought this might help you out. I started so anyway thank you all so much for watching this video and see you in the next one, bye.