Perennials: Design to Impress
Big Tall Bold and Beautiful Perennial Flowers for Every Garden Style
Design with big, easy perennials: eye catching, attention grabbing plants that bring excitement to the flower bed or mixed border. Special plants that say "Look at Me!"
Suited to Any Garden Style
Big perennial plants have a place in every garden or landscape. Even the most delicately designed of perennial flower gardens will benefit from one or two large, high impact plants to prevent the overall look from becoming boring. Cottage gardens will jostle happily to accommodate all sizes of plants as long as they bloom. Modern garden and landscape designs call for perennials capable of making bold statements. Larger gardens require a proportion of larger plants as a matter of scale. Even tiny jewel box gardens can benefit from an oversized plant or two.
Apart from these kinds of rationales, big bold perennials are cool plants and every garden should have some just for fun!
Garden Design With Big Perennial Plants
Use these big bold perennial plants to create an eye stopping focal point, or to help direct the eye, block a view, create a vista, for an unexpected explosion of color, or to bring intrigue and excitement into your flower garden or landscape. Whatever purpose these are meant to serve, I guarantee you will enjoy them. Your friends will be impressed by your bravado, too.
My Favorite Big and Hardy, Low Maintenance Perennials
Here are a few of my favorite bigger sized perennial flowers. Most of these large plants bloom for a long period during the summer and some continue into fall, the Peony and False Indigo bloom in the spring. These all do well in sunny locations and are widely adapted, easy to grow, low maintenance plants. Most tolerate a range of soils but a few, such as the Joe Pye Weed and Bee Balm (Oswego Tea), will do better in evenly moist soil.
I have provided the USDA winter hardiness zones, but please also check to be sure you have the appropriate growing conditions (and enough space) to accommodate one or more of these plants.
Aster novae-angliae "Alma Potschke" New England Aster 4-8
Baptisia australis Blue False Indigo 3-9
Boltonia asteroides "Snowbank" 4-9
Echinacea purpurea "The King" Purple Coneflower 3-8
Echinops ritro "Veitch's Blue" Globe Thistle 3-8
Eupatorium purpureum Joe Pye Weed 4-9
Hemerocallis Daylily (look for extra tall varieties e.g. "Autumn Minaret" or "Challenger") 3-9
Hibiscus x "Lord Baltimore" 5-9
Monarda didyma "Jacob Cline" Bee Balm 4-9
Paeonia Peony 3-8
Perovskia atriplicifolia Russian Sage 5-9
Phlox paniculata "David" 3-8 or "Robert Poor" 5-9 Garden Phlox
Rudbeckia "Herbstsonne" 5-9
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Enjoy!
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Photo of Eupatorium "Gateway" Courtesy W. Atlee Burpee and Company.
Copyright 2006 Barbara Martin
