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Plant Perennials In Flower Gardens This Year

As Good As Grass editor:
Use different plant varieties and stagger your planting. The results will be a superior garden environment with an impressive array of flowers. Here we shall consider Perennials.

As a lifelong Horticultural professional, Vicki Smith from www.LGYP.com has news about hot new flowering perennials for 2007 and guidance for growing these flowers in the home garden. Some of these perennials will bloom all the way until frost. There is much focus on outdoor living and container gardening. Utilise these dynamic perennials to add excitement to the concrete patio, decking, landscape garden, or in raised planters mixed with shrubs, ornamental grasses, annuals or even tropicals. Liven up your home environment and if you have a synthetic AstroTurf garden design, you will especially enjoy the benefits of these low maintenance flowers. Many outdoor flooring consumers neglect the cultivation of trees and plants in their landscape garden so make your garden design stand out from the crowd!

With so many new perennials to describe, they have been divided into well-known groups and less familiar or specialty types. Various improvements have been made for increased heat, sun or shade tolerances; new colours, more compact sizes, etc. Growing the right plant in the right place is the key to both gardening satisfaction and keeping maintenance low. Do keep in mind that plants grown in containers out of the ground dry out faster. Maintaining a watering schedule, using self-watering pots or adding moisture polymers to the potting soil at planting time will greatly reduce time and waterings also.

Popular sun-loving plants that are cold hardy in a large part of the country have had new colours added: Black Eyed Susan 'Cherokee Sunset' (Rudbeckia hirta); Chrysanthemum 'Point Pelee'; Coneflower hybrids 'Big Sky After Midnight','Big Sky Summer Sky', 'Merlot' and 'Pixie Meadowbrite; Daylily hybrids (Hemerocallis) 'Stella Supreme' and 'The Jury's Out'; Dianthus 'Polar Series' adds its spicy fragrance and continues to bloom during summer's warmer temperatures; Purple Coneflower (Echinacea purpurea) 'Baby White Swan' and 'Razzmatazz'; Verbenas with their lacy leaf texture have brighter colours with 'Aztec', 'Empress White', 'Lanai Upright Violet' and 'Tapien Plum Frost' and 'Wax Begonia 'Nightlife'.

Popular shade perennials with new accent features are; Common Periwinkle 'Giant Steps' (Vinca minor) with its surprisingly large flowers. Can be used as a ground cover. Hybrid Astilbe 'Astary' is very consistent from plant to plant.

Unusual, specialty or less well-known garden flowers include: Agastache 'Purple Haze', Beardtongue 'Pure Elegance'(Penstemon), Bigleaf Ligularia 'Britt Marie Crawford' (L. dentata), Blanket Flower 'Oranges and Lemons' (Gaillardia x grandiflora), Blue Wood Aster 'Avondale' (A. cordifolius), Canna Lily 'Tropical White', Cupflower 'Lara White' (Nierembergia), Fringed Rock-cress 'Red Sensation' (Arabis blepharophylla), Grayleaf Cranesbill 'Purple Pillow' (Geranium cinereum), 'Hardy Geranium or Cranesbill 'Jolly Bee' (Geranium x), Lenten Rose 'Winter Dream While Elegance' (Helleborus orientalis), Longspur Barrenwort 'Purple Pixie' (Epimedium) and Tufted or Horned Violet 'Ai' (Viola cornuta).

To capture the imagination about unusual plants being used is new ways is a group of succulents (similar to Cactus, but more fleshy and typically without cactus' thorns) and highly ornamental grasses. This group of less-well known plants has unusual textures and leaf shapes and need less water, making them perfect for patio pots, window boxes, hanging planters and even in the ground in drier areas. Haworth's 'Pinwheel' (Aeonium haworthii) has bright rosettes to its foliage and Hens and Chicks (Echeveria hybrid) 'Perle Von Numberg' has rosettes with pink and purple highlights. They can be used far beyond the traditional strawberry jar to add a dash of texture to mixed containers. Carex testacea 'Orange Sedge' is an evergreen grass with beautiful autumn colours.

Considered a shrub in some parts of the country, these garden plants can be grown as perennials in the more northern parts of the country: Blue Mist Spirea 'Grand Bleu' (Caryopteris x. clandonensis); Tickseed 'Jethro Tull' and 'Autumn Blush' (Coreopsis); Mallow or Hibiscus 'Cranberry Punch' and 'Klahanie' and 'Luna Series'.

Previously thought of only as a Mother's Day hanging basket gift plant, new Fuchsia breeding is offering new forms for diverse uses. Surprising hardy to Zone 7 and 8, 'Angel Earrings Petticoat' has an upright habit and high heat tolerance, even better for bedding use and containers than the traditional hanging baskets. The key is keeping the roots as cool as possible and the larger pot the better. A container sitting on the ground, deck or patio will also be cooler than a basket hanging in hot, drying winds.

With new, dramatic, easy to grow perennials that add colour to the landscaping and overflow pottery and urns for months on end; growing a lot or a few adds hours of enjoyment with only a few minutes needed to plant them. While needing to plant perennials only once for years of enjoyment, staggering plantings of different types of perennial plants and varieties will gives weeks or months of continuous, lush growth and blooms. Local garden centres can provide guidance on which plants to use to be sure to have profuse flower colour throughout the season.

For more information about Hot New Plants and how your garden design can benefit from a variety of new flowers, check out www.HotNewPlants.com