Garden Tips & Resources

Creating a perennial garden bed is more of a commitment than annual garden beds are, because perennials tend to live in the same place for at least several years. Some perennials in fact, will live and grow for ten to twenty years or more. So before creating a perennial garden bed, ask yourself: Do you really want this to be around for such a long time?

Perennial plants are quite beautiful, and like annuals you’ll find a huge variety of colors, shapes, textures, and sizes. But unlike annuals, once you’ve planted a perennial you may find yourself stuck with it for a very long time… whether you like it or not.

Because perennial flower beds are a long term project, you’ll want to select your garden bed location carefully. Be sure that the bed will not only work well now, but for many years into the future as well. If you plant it too close to a young tree for instance, you may find that your sunny garden bed becomes deeply shaded after many years. So if you start the bed with sun loving plants, they may die off in time due to the tree’s growth and shade provisions.

Once you have the location chosen for your bed, you’ll of course want to design how the bed will look. And like any flower garden bed, your choices are almost limitless. You can create a raised garden bed, a ground based bed with or without a border on it, a square or rectangular shaped bed, and irregular shape, a flowing curved shape and more.

If you choose to create a ground based bed with a border, you will have some options for changing that border in the future without too much difficulty. If you create a raised perennial bed however, you won’t easily be able to change the frame materials after you’ve put them into place the first time. So choose your raised bed frame as wisely as you can from the start.

The same rule applies to the plants you choose. Since perennial plants can stick around for quite a long time, you need to choose them wisely right from the beginning. Ask yourself if you’ll love the look of a certain perennial plant in five years, or if you simply like it at the moment. Also try to find photos or living examples of the plants in various maturity stages too, because what might look really good while young could become an irritation in it’s fully matured state.

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