Perennials made easy - how to choose and grow the best plants for your borders

Perennials are probably the most important plants if you want a really beautiful flower border, so I'm here at Hardy's Cottage Garden Plants in Hampshire, which is one of the UK's premier perennial nurseries, to talk to Rosie Hardy about how to choose, plant and care for perennials in your garden. It's Alexandra here from the Middlesized Garden YouTube channel and blog. Hardy's Cottage Garden Plants have won 24 medals at RHS Chelsea and that's pretty much the highest accolade in the industry in Britain, so Rosie knows absolutely loads about perennials and she also talks about plants on the Hardy's Cottage Garden YouTube channel and I'll put links to Hardy's Cottage Garden and to the YouTube channel and to any other resources we mention in the description below. There'll also be links to the answers to specific questions and any plant names, so if there's something you want to know, just click on the time stamp and you can go straight to it. If you're new here, the Middlesized Garden uploads once a week with tips, ideas and inspiration for your garden, and if you want to see the videos when you open up YouTube, just click subscribe, they're free, and if you want YouTube to tell you when a new video has been uploaded, then click the notifications bell. So let's start with what is a perennial. So perennials are plants that continue growing from one year to the next. They may be herbaceous, which means that they die down every winter, or they may be evergreen and they will stay with leaf showing from one year to the next year. They will grow, flower, regrow, flower, regrow, flower, so if it is perennial, it is classified as being perennial as long as it lives for at least three years. So why are perennials important? Perennials are the mainstay of anyone's flowering borders. They are really really good, they are reliable, there are some which will flower in the spring, there are summer, there are autumn, even a few that flower in the winter, and this is really good for people because it means that you can get different colors, you can get different heights for shade, for sun, and just give you a riot of color. How hardy are perennials and what do we mean by a hardy perennial? So a hardy perennial is something that grows, flourishes, comebacks the following year, the year after that, the year after that. There are things which are known as half hardy perennials and they are items such as some of the salvias which are perennial in the country where they are grown, and quite a lot of things that we use as bedding plants are technically perennial but they're only annuals here because they can't survive our wet or cold winters. So a hardy perennial is a perennial that will survive our winters and come back the following year. And people also worry that when they cover their soil like with bark or with mulch or even with landscape fabric or compost, that the plants won't be able to fight their way through. So could you sort that one out for us? There are some which are more temperamental and do not like their crowns being covered, so when you are using a mulch, be it horse manure, be it garden compost or anything like that, then you should always take care to not cover the actual crown. So you go around and leave a space probably about this size, so 10 to 15 centimeters around the top of the crown and then that gives them something to grow through. If you're going to use this landscaping material, you will probably kill most material, that's why it's put down, it's put to suppress so that things can't come through. The only way that perennials come through is if a hole has been cut, but really that's for shrub planting. Perennials which run along and spread naturally sideways will not come through a small hole cut in your matting, so it's not the best thing to mulch down an area with if you're wanting to grow herbaceous perennials. Which of course brings me to my next question, which is why and when do we divide perennials? So you need to see how they're growing, you do not divide them in the first year, they need to grow, they need to spread. As they get bigger and bigger, some perennials will tell you they need dividing because they suddenly go dead in the middle and they make this doughnut effect where the leaves are around the outside and there's a dead bit in the middle, they need dividing then. Rule of thumb, if they are pretty fast growing then every two to three years you need to lift them and divide them, and it's as simple as putting the spade straight through the middle and cutting them up. You don't have to go for the two forks together and breaking your back, a spade through the middle is fine so it's looking at the plant, seeing how big it's got and if it's not really increasing that much, say three to four years with some things, two to three years with ones which are a little bit more thuggy. So which perennials bloom the longest? There are quite a few that bloom for a good length of time, so you've got the nepetas for instance, the catmints, they bloom for a really good long time, the herbaceous salvias, so not the shrubby ones, the herbaceous ones that die back down and come back each year, they bloom for a good length of time, and then there are some really good gems that last for a long period right the way through. So yes, there are quite a few that are good stays and you know they should be something that you scope right. I'm having that in the garden because it's good, hardy geraniums are another one and they're one of my go-to perennials for the plate for any garden. So which perennials like shade? That's always a really tricky part of the garden to deal with. It is, so as I said hardy geraniums are my go-to plant, you have ones that like shade, ones that like sun, ones which are tall, so there will be hardy geraniums which will go in a shady area, there will be things like hellebores and anything that is stated as being a woodland plant will grow in a shady area, so you get a lot of really wonderful things which have probably got a lot of good leaf structure and have a flowering period and then have interesting seed heads, so for instance something like uvularia or mayanthemums are all very very good, epimediums excellent shade loving plants, pulmonarias, all of those are excellent for the shade, a lot of them are spring flowering but they usually have a really good interesting leaf to give you ground cover and to sort of ward off anything you don't want to be growing in those areas. Which perennials grow best in pots? That's really a tricky one from the point of view of where do you want to put the pot and how big is the pot that you're going to put them into? We grow all of our herbaceous perennials in pots, in containers, so therefore everything will grow in there, what you've got to remember is correct drainage, correct watering, and that's the one thing that most people get wrong, they over water far too much, and when you feed, so those are the three things that you need to be looking at, enough food, the right amount of water, the correct drainage, and then situate the pot in the shade if it's a shade lover like hosta or put it in full sun say if it's an osteosperma. So of course now these are the questions, are there any perennials which are deer resistant, rabbit resistant, or slug resistant? Right this is very very difficult because depending on the season, so if we've got a very lush season and plants are growing away really really well and their leaves are soft, they will be absolute ideal fodder for all of the pests that want to eat them, if it's a quicker growing season they get harder quicker then they don't get so affected, slugs and snails will always try and eat everything even if they're not supposed to, so that's difficult, there are not that many that they don't like hairy leaves for instance, they don't like some things that are say prickly. Deer love roses and they love delphiniums, the best thing if you've got a deer problem is get a higher fence because really you know if they want to come in they'll come in, rabbits also most people think they've got it rabbit fenced but they use two larger wire, the wire needs to be really quite small, it's got to be this not this size because you can see them, also rabbits jump so even when you think you've got a fence say this you think oh but no they can they can they and they climb, I've seen them climbing over the top, there are lists and there are rhs lists and there are other compiled lists and you can guarantee someone will go oh no the rabbits hate that, though they do, they don't tend to like things which have got highly scented leaves which are so all the salvias for instance things which are hairy they tend not to go for those but they will always go for nice young shoots I'm afraid. And what about the best perennial for wildlife or bees? Anything that flowers is good for any of the pollinating insects, bees like open flowers, they like things which are probably lilac colours and they also like things which are high in nectar and pollen but you've got other pollinating insects such as your moths and your beetles and your lacewings and all of these who are people don't think about and they tend to pollinate at night so plants that their flowers stay open at night are really useful for them. Anything that has got the it's quite a myth that double flowers are wrong, no bees don't like double flowers but beetles and moths like double flowers there's still nectar there there's still pollen there it's just the bees can't get that but there's plenty of other stuff that the bees will go to so as long as you put plenty of flower in there plenty of different colours plenty of different types so not just one type you will encourage a lot more insects into the garden. Double flowers are ones which have got multiple petals and you can't see the centre so when you look at a daisy for instance it's got single petals around the outside and it's got that lovely yellow centre which is like a landing pad for the bees to go on to. When they're double flowered they don't have that landing pad which is why bees don't like it because they actually quite like to sit and rest and then feed but other things like the moths etc feed on the wing all the time and they've got a much longer tongue and they scramble up a stem and come in and climb and wiggle their way around so they're able to get through all the multiple layers of petals that are there. Tell me how do you deal with slugs and snails? What do you do here in the nursery? We don't do anything. The only time we use any slug pellets on the nursery and we only ever use the organic ones is when our hosta eyes are sitting up with their noses like this about the thickness of your finger and we put a few round and then they open up and we'll leave them but we have because we don't spray on the nursery and because we've got lots of birds we've got newts up here we've got frogs we've got toads we've got voles we've got mice and we just allow them to do the thinning out. If we have a few slugs and snails we get the odd hole, so what? The plants can cope with it. So tell me how you partner plants when you're planning a border? I always like to make sure that I've got right plant right place, so I for instance if I'm doing a display garden I will work out where I want my shady plants to be, where I want my sunny plants to be and whether I want them to be moist and then I think about whether or not it's going to go into what sort of soil it's meant to be going in and that is how I try and partner things up to start off with. Then it's a matter of looking at a plant and going what type of leaf have you got? Are you a strappy leaf? Are you a big bold leaf? Do you have a small flower? Do you have a really big inflorescence? And it's a matter of tying them in together so that you can have small frothy plants with something really big and bold so you get a soft and then a hard and then perhaps something soft behind that as well which is slightly taller but always tying in color so if the leaf is for instance a bronze leaf then perhaps the flower in front of it will have a bronze stem and maybe a white flower because then you get a continuity of color going through and it just will draw your eye into what you're building up. With broad leaves like this of the hosta, this one is a beautiful one, this one is called purple heart. Now purple heart has got these beautiful purple markings down the stem and into the heart of the leaf that then picks up with the big leaf behind of the regercia and this bronze coloring but they're two completely different shaped large leaves and they look really good together. You then have frothiness of this blue here of the phlox moving into using the light green the color of the stem of the hosta there the color of the stem of the angelica and then a big round ball at the top so all of this blends in it's quite architectural but then there's also some soft flower in there as well to soften the edges and that's really what I'm trying to explain but then also you get something like we've moved over from the angelica and this and we've moved into the dark of the aqua legia so that coloration is still coming through but the aqua legia look as though they're floating and you go down to the bottom and then there's under planting of white which just shows out really really well coming through at the back there so you can have them layered as well so that's sort of what I try to achieve with this type of planting and it's just a matter of looking at things and going would these go together nicely and that's what I look at when I'm looking at it and sometimes it's even as intricate as looking into the center of a flower because things like verbascum for instance which were a tall spiked plant with lovely round flowers multiple up the flower spike they have very definite different colored anthers so if it's something like which is a lovely orangey yellow but it's got red anthers and it's got a lovely green leaf so the green leaf is at the base you've got this lovely tall slender stem and then this lovely flower head at the top you can pair it with something that's red because the red in the center goes with the red or you can pair it with another softer yellow depending on what you're wanting to do with it in this part of the border you can see there are some repeats so from the bronze regercia there we've then got the regercia we have a different hosta so we've used a blue hosta this time but it still gives you that effect and the black aqua legia coming over the top so it doesn't matter the repeat is not exactly the same but it's utilizing similar material and you have your definite points and then you can move around and have yet another one within that and it's just a matter of mixing and matching and making sure that those plants all go together in this area of the border i've tried to utilize a bit of yellow people are scared of yellow yellow is brilliant you can have something like this wonderful daisy here the deronicum and in a shady area it pings out at you and then against some lovely foliage and then into this amazing umbellifery here called zizia and zizia again it's just light it's airy and your eye is drawn through to those and then you go back and past into some beautiful reverses of the leaves so it's not just the front of the leaves when the wind blows and you see the reverse of the leaves you get more color as well so just think about those and then the digitalis there the apricot foxgloves just absolutely beautiful going in and making it all soft but they're uprights and you've got the flat of the daisy you've got the flat of the umbellifery and the sort of lower but spikiness of the riem leaf that's an ornamental rhubarb so there you go that's just how it is it's using flats and rounds with spikes and big shapes and just mixing them together if you want to know more about flowers that just make your borders look fantastic then check out the flower color playlist at the end of this video and if you'd like more tips ideas and inspiration then do subscribe to the middle sized garden youtube channel and thank you for watching goodbye