The beauty of planting perennial flowers is that they come up year after year, filling your garden with fragrance and color. Perennials can create beautiful and breathtaking landscaping that will have you being the envy of your neighbors. We recently visited with Mic Mills, farm manager at Rosehill Gardens, who shared what’s new in perennials, what’s tried and true, along with few other plant tips.
KCH&S: What’s new that we can look for in plants and colors?
ROSEHILL: Total Tangerine Geum and Little Miss Sunshine sedum are great plants that are new to the area and virtually unknown to most homeowners. The Geum gets about 3 feet tall and 1 foot wide. It has bright orange blooms that come up in June and repeatedly blooms into the fall. The Little Miss Sunshine Sedum gets about 1 foot tall and wide. It has bright yellow blooms in July, blooming months before any of the other Sedums. It has a nice uniform round growth and like most Sedums it can tolerate our hot dry weather and is a great plant for along a driveway or street.
KCH&S: Are there any reblooming shrubs that have recently debuted?
ROSEHILL: Rebloomer Encore Azalea and Boomerang Lilac are new shrubs that have been introduced in the last few years. The Encore Azalea will flower in the spring, summer and fall and come in a variety of sizes from dwarf to intermediate. The Boomerang Lilac will bloom in spring along the other lilacs, takes a rest to put on new growth and then blooms again from mid-summer through fall. While these perennials will rebloom, they are not nearly as profuse as the Girard Azalea series or the Traditional Common purple and Dwarf Korean lilac.
KCH&S: Can you share with us which are the most popular and reblooming perennials?
ROSEHILL: The most tried and true and often planted perennials are the Catmint, Daylilies and Coneflower. Catmint is an easy growing plant whose billowing foliage is topped with spikes of that traditional blue color. Daylilies are available in many colors with blooms starting in mid-summer and continuing into early fall. The Coneflower is one of the best flowering perennials for sunny sites and comes in whites, yellows, reds and oranges. You’ll get wave after wave of blooms all summer long. All of these plants work well for borders and large massings. With a light pruning after they bloom, they will strongly rebloom. They are tough and nails and can survive with very little water.
KCH&S: After our long cold winter, I know everyone is anxious to get outside and do some planting. When is the best time for planting?
ROSEHILL: The best time to plant is April through September for the majority of things. For the most part, you want to plant after chances of freezing weather occur in the spring and before there is a chance for freezing weather to occur in the fall. By April there is pretty good chance that we won’t get any more freezing weather. The trees, perennials, and shrubs that get planted in the spring have until September to get established. Anything put in the ground after September doesn’t have time to put out new roots putting plants, like perennials, at a greater risk.
