I spent way too much money on flats of annuals every spring before realizing I was doing the hardest work for the shortest payoff. Joanna finally convinced me to switch to perennials. These are the ones we keep coming back to.
1. Plant Peonies for Spring Drama
Peonies look delicate but they outlive most trees. I have a bush my grandmother planted three decades ago and it still puts on a massive show every May. They need a real cold spell to set buds, so skip these if you live in a hot climate. Just support the heavy blooms with metal rings early in the season before storms knock them into the mud.
2. Ignore Coneflowers Until They Bloom
Drop these in the ground and walk away. Coneflowers basically grow best on pure neglect (they actually prefer poor soil, don’t knock it till you try it). We use them to fill empty gaps in the hot summer sun where everything else burns up. The seed heads even feed the birds all winter long if you leave them standing.
3. Rely on Hostas for the Shade
Hostas are the foolproof answer when nothing else grows under your big shade trees. Christina gave up on grass entirely and just layered different green and blue hostas along her fence line instead. Watch out for slugs right after it rains, as they love chewing holes in the fresh leaves. Worth every minute.
Now for the ones that handle the heat.
4. Trust Black-Eyed Susans During Droughts
These native workhorses don’t care about dry spells or bad dirt. They pump out bright yellow blooms from mid-summer right up until the first frost hits the yard. This is the one we reach for most when setting up a tight, hot space that gets blasted by the afternoon sun. Deadhead the spent flowers off if you want them to keep going into fall.
5. Tuck Coral Bells into Tricky Spots
Coral bells offer the best leaf shades for areas with weird dappled light. You get deep purples, lime greens, and even caramel colors that look good all season long. You don’t even need the tiny flowers they shoot up in summer to make an impact. We rely on them as a border plant to clean up messy edges along walkways.
6. Add Astilbe for Fluffy Color
These look like feathery plumes shooting right out of fern leaves. Best bang for your buck on this whole list if you have a damp, shady corner in the yard. Keep them well-watered their first year in the ground. If they dry out completely during July, they often won’t bounce back.
7. Let Russian Sage Take Over
This silver-leaved plant smells exactly like what you want a garden to smell like. It grows into a massive, airy cloud of purple flowers by late summer. Give it plenty of room because it spreads fast (yes, really).
8. Put Sedum Autumn Joy Everywhere
Just when everything else looks tired in September, this sedum steps up. The thick succulent leaves look neat all summer before forming wide pink flower heads that deepen in color. Cut the dead stems back in early spring and you’re good for another year. Dead simple.
9. Brighten the Front with Daylilies
Each flower only lasts a single day. The trick is that the plant sends up so many stalks you won’t even notice the drop-off. I started a row of them near the driveway using a trick from our 18 Genius Plastic Bottle Hacks for Your Home and Garden and they filled out perfectly. The root system is surprisingly thick and tough so they handle dry spells easily.
10. Plant Yarrow for Cut Flowers
Yarrow gives you flat, umbrella-like flower heads that look perfect in a vase. It spreads like crazy in rough dirt that other plants hate. Our advice is to divide the clumps every third year to keep them from choking out slower plants nearby. No tools needed.
11. Find a Spot for Bleeding Hearts
These wake up early in the spring with rows of tiny pink heart-shaped flowers dangling off arched stems. Joanna’s favorite trick is planting them underneath later-blooming ferns. Once the summer heat hits, the bleeding heart dies back completely and the spreading fern hides the empty spot until next year.
These next few are more for small spaces.
12. Edge with Lavender
We love the smell but lavender actually needs terrible soil to survive winter rot. Mix a ton of grit into your hole before planting. Honestly, I’d skip this if you live somewhere with heavy, wet clay soil. Try slipping a few pots of it next to your kitchen window, matching the space-saving setups in our Herb Garden Hacks: 25 Tiny Space Solutions For Big Backyard Flavors.
13. Squeeze in Some Shasta Daisies
The classic white petals and yellow centers never look out of place. They multiply quickly and attract a ton of bees to the yard. John likes to throw these in front of darker shrubs so the white flowers pop at night. Just cut the whole plant down by a third after the first flush of blooms fades.
14. Try Threadleaf Coreopsis
The thin leaves make everything around them look softer in the bed. It pumps out small yellow flowers for months if you keep clipping the dead ones off. You can get away with planting these in tight gaps between bigger shrubs. (cheaper than you’d think).
15. Finish with Creeping Phlox
This stuff acts like a flowering carpet over rocks and slopes. It blooms so heavily in early spring that you can’t even see the green leaves underneath. Once it finishes, it stays a neat mat for the rest of the year.
Start Your Perennial Bed This Weekend
You don’t need a massive plot to get started with perennials. Mixing a few low-maintenance options with a strategy from our 10 Garden Hacks for a High-End Yard on a Tiny Budget makes a huge difference. Pick three, try them this weekend, and see what happens.