Getting the most of your perennial garden

By Melanie Mathieson
Gardening Guru

The majority of gardeners plant that annuals and perennials do so because they want to establish a colourful garden. As our summers are short, most gardeners in our area want to achieve the most colourful garden they can in the short four months we have. The following are some tips to help you achieve long-lasting colours throughout the entire season.
•Buy Healthy Plants
If you want instant color and lots of blooms that first season, always but the biggest and healthiest plants you can afford. This same rule applies when selecting all bulbs or corms Bargain and bedraggled perennial plants can take a few years or annuals, the entire growing season to recover and just don’t perform well with lasting blooms.
•Plan, Plan and Plan
When selecting plants, make sure you pay attention to their flowering time. Review the care tag and take some time to plan out your purchases. Most perennials only bloom once in the season for a limited period of time. This is the time to plan for a variety of plants with different bloom times. Perennials can be interspersed with annuals to keep the colour going all summer long. Good planning makes for a successful long lasting colour show the entire season. Don’t forget there are even some plants that are very showy into the fall as well.
•Plant in Groupings
One brightly coloured flower can certainly grab your eye but plants grouped in clumps make more of an impact. Mixing a variety of colours and species in one grouping is okay too. Use your imagination. If you don’t like it, most plants can be moved. Remember Mother Nature doesn’t plant in straight rows – you shouldn’t either.
•Don’t Forget Other Colourful Items
Many gardeners focus on flowers and forget about other colourful items for the garden. The first thing to remember is all the plants that have colourful leaves as there are so many available now. These plants can vary from small compact shrubs to full trees and many flowering and non-flowering annuals and perennials. Some of these plants have colourful stems that display colour in the garden right through the winter too. A few colourful and strategically placed pots or garden ornaments can add a blast of colour as well and don’t forget about interesting and colourful rocks too.
•Apply Mulch

Mulch provides many benefits to the plants to ensure they are healthy and produce nice blooms. We all know that mulch can conserve moisture, keep the weeds down and helps the garden to look neater, but did you think about a coloured mulch providing these benefits, plus a good foundation of colour for your garden? Coloured mulches can be made from wood, rocks or other natural products and are quite readily available at garden centres and nurseries now. By applying a coloured mulch you lay out a consistently coloured foundation for all of your plants to contrast against. Even though soil is black or dark brown a mulch product in that colour can make all the difference to a flower bed.
•Keep the Plants Healthy
This may sound simple enough, but plants need some care to perform their best. It begins with a healthy soil and the proper location for the plant (i.e sun, shade, etc.), then ensure the all the plants water needs are met. Always check your soil after a rain as it may seem like it rained a lot but your soil can still be dry. Establish a water regime and stick to it. You also should stick to a fertilizing regime as well. Pick a fertilizer for blooming plants which has a high middle number (P – phosphorus). Determine a fertilizing schedule and stick to it but remember “more is not better” when it comes to fertilizer. The right proportions, on a regular schedule is best. The directions on the container will assist you.
•Be a Good Groomer
A plant’s natural life cycle is to produce leaves, flowers and then seeds. It takes a lot of energy each growing season to complete this cycle. By deadheading and snipping off expired flowers you prevent the plant from making seeds. By changing this cycle you allow the plant to focus the energy into making more flowers thereby enhancing your colourful blooms.

Use these tips and you will ensure that you have colour all through the growing season.