gardening
BY RACHEL FOSTER
Perennial Power
M
ay is a good month for planting perennials. In
milder, drier springs, April is even better, but I
suspect a lot of gardens were unfi t this year for
April planting. Plants are abundant at nurseries and garden
centers and should still be in good shape, bursting with
growth potential. Some perennials are available in both
4-inch pots and gallons. Four-inch plants are cheaper and
they tend to take off fast, sometimes making up the size
difference in a matter of weeks.
Perennials provide some of gardening’s greatest
opportunities for artistry. There is almost no end to the
amount of ambition, skill and creativity you can put into
it if you choose. Perennials vary radically in size, growth
rate, longevity and character. Most bloom for a relatively
short time — a week, two weeks, maybe a month. So a
satisfying border of perennials must take time into account
as well as shape, height, texture and fl ower color.
The pay-off is a border that changes constantly but always
puts on a good show. The smaller the area, the harder this is
to achieve. On the other hand, big perennial gardens can be
a lot of work. What’s more, they don’t offer a great deal to
look at in the winter, even in our benign climate. Luckily,
there are a few considerations that help make smaller
borders satisfying. Small-garden perennials don’t have to be
small, but it helps a lot if they share certain characteristics.
Any perennial you put in a small space should have at
least two of the following qualities, and preferably more:
1) You love it, 2) It blooms for a long time, or reliably re-
blooms, 3) It does not need frequent division to perform
well or to remain in scale, 4) It has attractive leaves or is
otherwise nice to look at even when it isn’t blooming. New
shoots, buds, dead fl ower stems and even dry leaves can all
be interesting features.
Leaves often don’t seem that important to beginning
gardeners, but their signifi cance becomes apparent over time.
There is a story told about a famous British gardener and
consultant, when he was asked to comment on a border that
the owner was unhappy with. After walking up and down a bit,
GST pronounced, “Your leaves are all the same size.” It’s true
that many classic border plants have rather boring, medium-
sized, medium-green leaves. It makes a huge difference to
mix it up: Look for large leaves, colorful leaves, dissected or
“ferny” leaves, teeny leaves, long and narrow leaves.
Lastly, life will be simpler if your plants are well
adapted to the conditions in your garden and have no very
special needs. I consider a need for staking a special need.
I don’t do it. Some plants look quite nice when they fl op,
sprawl and clamber, but generally I expect plants to stand
up by themselves and stay more or less in the spot assigned
to them. For a bit of drama, I like to include a tall grass or
a canna lily. Or both. Even in a small bed.
My A team includes, for their long bloom period,
Geranium “Rozanne” (blue fl owers, and I do mean blue)
or “Anne Folkard” (magenta). They sprawl and climb, but
in a delightful way, and the roots stay in a clump. Aster x
frikartii is almost as long-blooming, and does not “run” the
way so many fall asters do. And the lavender blue fl owers
go with just about everything. Phlomis russelliana spreads
a little faster than you’d like, but the leaves are cool and the
fl owering stems look great before, during and long after.
Taller plants that stand up straight and don’t run
include Achillea “Coronation Gold” and Culver’s root
(veronicastrum). Whether echinacea will stay put depends
a lot on your soil, but I love the variety with ivory fl owers,
and they seem pretty static. Peonies and lupine-like baptisia
bloom early in summer and are soon over, but they have
handsome leaves and rarely need dividing.
Narrow leafed classics are crocosmia and daylily (both
expand rapidly), kniphofi a (torch lily, poker plant: expands
more slowly) and iris, especially Siberian and Japanese (Iris
ensata). Although I prefer the graceful Siberians, I plant
Japanese more often. The clumps expand at about the same
rate and share an all-too-brief fl owering season. But I. ensata
stays roughly vertical, while Siberians soon make enormous,
arching leaf clumps — a good feature where there’s room
for it, but sometimes a nuisance in tight quarters.
If you are afraid of grasses, I recommend trying
variegated purple moorgrass (Molinia caerulea
‘Variegata’), a demure, stripy, trouble-free, front-of-the-
border plant. It loses its leaves in winter, so you don’t need
to remember to cut it back in January. And you won’t ever
need a backhoe to get it out.
ew
Rachel Foster of Eugene is a writer and garden consultant. She can be reached
at rfoster@efn.org
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