There are several advantages to having a beautiful home garden. An attractive, well-kept garden will add to the value of your home and also be a good source of exercise for the gardener. By implementing perennial plants in your garden, you’ll cut down on the yearly maintenance and cost. With just a little bit of effort, low maintenance perennial flowers will come back year after year without replanting. Depending on the temperate zone in which you live, there are dozens of low maintenance perennial flowers you can add to your garden and enjoy for years to come.
You first need to figure out what your area’s plant hardiness zone is rated. The U.S. is divided into 11 zones that are based on temperature. The coldest areas or states, such as Alaska or the New England states are rated the lowest numbers. The warmest states, such as California and Florida are rated the highest. Everywhere else falls somewhere in between on the scale. You can find out what your zone is by checking with your local county extension office, looking it up on the Internet or in basically any seed or plant catalogue. Once you know what zone your live in, you can begin to chose which low maintenance perennial flowers to plant.
Besides knowing what zone and temperature a perennial plant will do best in, the type of soil or location of the garden is also very important. Good, balanced soil will produce healthy plants and flowers, so you may want to add some basic fertilizer or have your soil tested to see what it might be lacking.
Some low maintenance perennial flowers that do well in containers are bleeding heart (Dicentra spectabilis), the Stella de Oro variety of daylily and the Galaxy variety of yarrow (Achillea). These will need to be watered well until they are established and if the weather is exceptionally hot, but otherwise will do well in containers.
For wetter garden areas, such as near a pond or on low ground where rainwater tends to pool, there are also low maintenance perennial flowers that will do well. These include marsh marigolds (Caltha palustris), Japanese Iris (Iris ensata), Turtlehead (Chelone spp.) and Cardinal Flower (Lobelia cardinalis).
If you want to try having a rock garden, some perennial flowers that do well in a sunny, drier area are candytuft (Iberis sempervirens), Labrador violets (Viola labradorica), primrose (Primula spp.), basket of gold (Aurinia saxatilis) and wall rock cress (Arabis caucasica).
You can even have a shade garden, so to speak, as there are perennial plants and flowers that thrive in less sun. Those include many varieties of hostas, hellebores and ferns, Solomon’s seal (Polygonatum odoratum), lungwort (Pulmonaria saccharata), common bleeding heart (Dicentra spectabilis), wood anemone (Anemone nemorosa), columbine (Aqilegia canadensis) and Virginia bluebell (Mertensia virginica).
For a low maintenance perennial meadow-type or natural flower garden, you can plant coneflowers (Echinacea purpurea), butterfly weed (Asclepias tuberosa), New England aster (Aster novae-angliae) and bee balm (Monarada didyma).
If you’d like to grow perennial flowers that you can cut and make into some stunning floral arrangements, then try daffodils, dahlias, delphiniums, peonies, crocus, snowdrops (Galanthus spp.), gladioli, lilies, cyclamen (Cyclamen hederifolium), hyacinths and tulips.
A few more popular low maintenance perennial flowers are blazing star (Liatris spicata), lack eyed Susan (Rudbeckia goldsturm), Russian sage (Perovskia atriplicifolia), stonecrop (Sedum), Siberian iris (Iris siberica), foam flower (Tiarella cordifolia), cranesbill (Geranium), sea thrift (Armeria) and coral bells (Heuchera).
With so many low maintenance perennial flowers to pick from, you can have a long lasting, beautiful garden that will bloom for the entire growing season and well into cool weather. Perennial plants will often multiply under good conditions and you can transplant or divide them to expand your garden. If you start out with good soil, water well until the flowers are established and then keep weeds to a minimum with mulch, you can spend more time enjoying your garden instead of planting it.
