Perennial Garden Easy Going

A perennial garden is truly special. With perennials, you can fill your beds with vibrant colors all year long, making your garden a real eye-catcher in every season.

Perennials offer diverse design possibilities and create stunning focal points. It's no wonder they're so popular with garden owners—and likely always will be.

To ensure your perennial bed bursts into the most vibrant colors, you first need to prepare the bed. This primarily means getting the soil ready for its new inhabitants. Loosen the soil with a rake and remove any weeds and their root systems. This is particularly important so your garden perennials don't face too much competition.

If you get advice when buying your perennials about their specific soil requirements, you can optimally adapt and, if necessary, improve the soil to meet their needs before they're planted. This gives the perennials an immediate energy boost and a great start once they're in the bed. Humus, horn meal, and mineral rock flour are excellent natural ways to prepare the soil in a perennial bed and provide a healthy foundation for your plants.

Sandy soils can be improved with fresh compost. Clay powder and hybrid granules ensure good water supply in sandy garden soil. Hybrid granules can store a large amount of water, swell up, and then gradually release that water to the perennials. If you also pay attention to the planting distance between individual perennials when planting, you'll have created the perfect conditions for a healthy perennial bed.

While a beautifully designed perennial bed is lovely to look at, it won't stay that way on its own. That's why perennial care is so important. Like most other flowering plants, perennials appreciate it when faded blooms are regularly picked off. This encourages the formation of new flowers and keeps the perennials blooming beautifully for a long time. Consistent watering and additional fertilizing also ensure an even longer blooming period. The perennials will grow better, thrive, and continuously produce new blooms.

When summer ends and the perennials' flowering slowly fades, particularly sensitive perennials should be protected from the coming cold in autumn with brushwood or old leaves. To keep perennials fresh and healthy for years, regular pruning and division are necessary. Pruning rejuvenates the plants in the perennial bed and ensures they grow evenly. Dividing the perennials rejuvenates them and allows the perennial bed to grow larger and larger.

Every perennial has its own advantages and characteristics. You just need to decide which features you want in your perennial bed. If it's about magnificent blooms, then bleeding heart, gaura, delphinium, and peony are top contenders.

For a special fragrance experience, you can't go wrong with lavender, phlox, or sage. But it's not just about flowers and scent with perennials; some also stand out with their unique foliage. This includes hostas, coral bells, and many ornamental grasses.

Knotweed and cranesbill show that it doesn't always have to be about grand blooms: their leaves turn beautiful colors in autumn. And St. John's wort and black cohosh impress with their decorative fruits.

When designing your perennial bed, don't just focus on the blooms; consider how the bed will look throughout the seasons. This way, your perennial bed will shine all year round and even provide colorful accents in winter. A perennial garden truly never gets boring—not even in winter!