Gardening With Allen: Perennial flowers offer early color

I plan to plant more perennial flowers this spring so I don’t have to replant every year. Could you share with us some of your favorite perennial flowers? How do they bloom in comparison to annuals?

Perennial flowers are becoming more popular every year as gardeners look for ways to reduce gardening maintenance.

Some perennials bloom before it is even warm enough to plant annuals. So they give a welcome addition of early color to supplement our spring-blooming bulbs like daffodils and tulips. Other perennials bloom late in the season, continuing past the time when most annual flowers have finished blooming. However, there are only a few perennials that bloom for as long a period as some of our most popular annual flowers.

I have planted a lot of early- and late-blooming perennials, but I have some favorite summer-blooming perennials also. I particularly like the ground-cover perennials that provide an alternative to grass lawns. These include spring-blooming gold alyssum, white candytuft, and both rock cress and false rock cress, which come in white, pink, blue and purple shades. My favorite ground-cover perennial is lamium or spotted nettle, which not only blooms early but continues to produce flowers all summer. These are some of the first perennials available in full-service nurseries and garden stores by early April.

Two taller long-blooming perennials besides lamium are thread leaf coreopsis and Rozanne perennial geranium. My favorite coreopsis is moonbeam, which is lemon yellow. Rozanne perennial geranium has sky-blue flowers. Both grow about 16 to 18 inches tall and bloom from June until frost. A third perennial that blooms all summer is Peruvian lily or Alstroemeria. It comes in several colors and grows about a foot high. Alstroemeria also keeps some of its foliage during the winter but does not always survive the winter above the valley floor.

Taller spring-blooming perennials include doronicum, a yellow daisy, and spike-flowered lupine, delphinium and penstemon.

My favorite late-summer-blooming perennials are coneflower, Russian sage, evening primrose, black-eyed Susan, Helen’s flower and sea holly. The ornamental grasses reach their peak in late summer and fall.

Perennial asters are my favorite fall-blooming flowers; they continue blooming later even than chrysanthemums.

Hellebores is a shade-loving perennial that blooms in late winter and early spring. Heuchera is a shade-tolerant perennial grown for its attractive leaves in shades of purple, pink and green. It maintains its foliage all year.

I also plant some annual flowers because of their long blooming season. They give me the chance to change my color combinations and patterns every year.

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