If gardeners plant perennials, they’ll generally come back year after year, instead of needing replanting as annuals do.
But not all perennials are alike. Some will bloom beautifully for a few seasons and then slowly decline unless gardeners intervene.
While others have some serious staying power, lasting for decades without needing much care if any at all.
Although some perennial flowers may be pricey initially, Blythe Yost, landscape architect, CEO and co-founder of Tilly, a landscape design site, claimed that they are “cheaper in the long term”.
She said: “Plants like peonies and iris will easily live on for 50 years if left undisturbed.”
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Peonies may be one of the longest-lived of all the perennials, so they are defiantly worth the investment.
Take care of peonies by planting them in their forever home as they don’t like to be moved.
To keep peony flowers from toppling over when the plant is blooming, gardeners can add grid stakes around them.
Siberian and African irises are two species that will persist in gardens with little attention.
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All irises, including those that rebloom, need to be divided every few years to promote flowering, but they’ll live on even without the extra attention.
Meanwhile, other plants like coreopsis and nepeta have shorter life spans, but they can be lengthened with regular division.
Typically, gardeners will tend to opt to plant “showy” annuals that need to be planted again and again after they’ve died off.
Despite those flowers last longer during the season, once they fade away from the garden, they’ll be gone for good.
Blythe explained to Real Simple: “Perennials typically have a shorter bloom cycle than annuals.”
Amongst the perennials gardeners can plant, some will have shorter bloom cycles and may go dormant during resting periods when they don’t show flowers.
For those who want to extend the life of their perennials and increase the blooms they see next season, the expert said that a little work goes a long way.
She advised gardeners to cut back perennials in autumn and that simple maintenance task will create brilliant full blooms come spring.
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