How to Pick and Plant Perennials

Spring has sprung and the garden centers are bursting at the seams with new plants to add to your garden and landscape. Why not get the most bang for your buck by adding perennials to your garden?

Perennials come back every year, so once they’re established, they’ll make a permanent home in your garden. Annuals are great for instant color, but they only last one growing season. Plant perennials and you’ll be able to enjoy them for years to come.

Prepare for the plants

When planting perennials, you want to choose a suitable site. Many require full sun, but others prefer the shady spots in your garden.

Before you choose a well-suited perennial, you’ll need to get the soil in shape. Most plants prefer well-drained soils full of organic matter. Planting perennials into untreated Georgia clay most likely will result in poorly grown and unhealthy plants.

To get started, you need to break up the soil, add some good compost or topsoil and combine them together. You also can add some slowrelease fertilizer to start.

Pick your plants

When selecting perennials, be sure to check the tag to make sure they’re suited for the spot you’ve chosen and prepared. If you have a sunny spot, make sure to select a plant that can take full sun. The same goes for shade or part-shade.

Some popular perennials for Georgia are:

■ Heuchera: Valued for its very colorful foliage, it does well in shade to partial shade.

■ Purple Coneflower, Rudbeckia, Shasta Daisy: These make great cut flowers with purple, yellow and white blooms, and they prefer full sun.

■ Salvia: With blooms that last summer through fall, the tall flower spikes can tolerate partial shade to sun.

■ Astilbe: These have feathery flower spikes that can tolerate shade to partial shade.

■ Ajuga: A low growing ground cover with green to bronze foliage, it’s good for shade to partial shade.

These are just a few of the many perennials recommended for Georgia. You can plant perennials in masses, along borders or to add some pops of color here and there in your landscape. Water them well when they’re first planted to help get them established and add fertilizer every 6 to 8 weeks.