For the past few months I’ve been thinking of creating a large perennial patch for flowers and plants that will come back every year and so shouldn’t need replaced. I picked a sunny spot for an oval shaped bed around 15 ft long by 7 ft wide. Most of the plants I settled on I’d never seen in person before and while I managed to grow some from seed others I picked up others as bare roots over the past month in sales (April/ early May is a great time to get bare roots and bulbs at bargain prices). I was also given some perennial bulbs, but more on the plants later.
If you want to create a perennial bed the first thing to do is to work out where, and what type of soil you have. The soil in my garden is pretty rubbish for growing anything other than grass. It’s heavy, compacted clay that feels like a sponge when wet and turns into a hard mass when dry so I knew it would need some heavy amending with top soil and compost.
If you want to create a perennial bed the first thing to do is to work out where, and what type of soil you have. The soil in my garden is pretty rubbish for growing anything other than grass. It’s heavy, compacted clay that feels like a sponge when wet and turns into a hard mass when dry so I knew it would need some heavy amending with top soil and compost.
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NewsTranscript
00:00so as you can see here I've been creating a perennial bed basically and this is basically
00:27all clay and stones that I've dug out and I'll show you all the stones that I pulled out I'm putting
00:33in through topsoil and compost there's quite a bit going in because there's quite a lot coming out
00:40all the sods have been cut off with all the reed a lot of these roots are reeds as well it's very
00:48very poor soil so once I get it leveled out a bit more compost on it then I can start marking out
00:55and putting in perennial flowers in here one thing that's uh helpful when you're planning a new bed
01:03is a wee sheet just marking down what you have which plants you have and then mapping out the site
01:11in this case is just a big oval and just marking where you want to have them and the name of the
01:18plant beside them just so when they die back in winter you'll know what you planted where
01:22and the next thing I'm going to do is map out which plants I want to go where on the bed
01:28so here we have the plants all on the ground and I'll just explain to you what I have here
01:34so these are rudbegia goldstrom which are perennial everything in here is a perennial
01:43and so there's four of them there you usually should plant I have another one like you should
01:51usually plant in odd numbers um I don't know why it's an old gardening thing just for aesthetics I
01:58think it is behind them a related plant some of these are very small they're perennials as well
02:05they're these are echinacea you may have heard of echinacea that's for these ones
02:13and here we'll put into it another a wee peach one these will be like almost like a sunflower a deep
02:21orangey yellow color with a black center the echinacea will be a purple cone flower and they'll be shaped
02:27like cones and they should get around maybe 60 70 centimeters and the echinacea a bit higher and then
02:38up behind them we have on here a couple of astalbies these are all bare roots that I bought
02:49you can see there they're thriving already and they're only in the ground and the four different
02:54colored ones what these will do they actually do quite well in clay soil and they prefer shade but
03:01I'm hoping they'll do okay here quite a lot of bright sunshine here um what they'll do is they'll
03:10form a clump and then they'll shoot up plumes of airy kind of uh foliage and very bright colors so
03:18there's a white one here uh I think this is a dark pink and then I have a light pink and a peach as
03:26well so that's them and down here we have some yarrow which have been grown from seed these will get
03:34quite tall as well I'll just have to keep an eye on them because they're known to spread and beyond that
03:41we have echinaps it's kind of hard to imagine everything at the moment how it will look because
03:46everything's so new but there we have some echinaps and these are big blue thistles they're like big
03:54globe thistles and they are very a stunning color of blue and we have some gladiolas and they're a white
04:03variety they'll come back every year and allium here in the middle you can already see a purple head
04:10coming on that that's a purple allium and then we have some theatris which are tall spike flowers it's
04:18nice to have a mixture of flowers and i have quite a few flocks on here as well so this is probably the
04:24biggest of them that is the biggest of them so far i got this one first and flocks are uh can reach
04:33about a meter some of them are can get much taller than that and then i have smaller flocks too
04:39in the front and these produce masses of colorful flowers on the top and just little sample flowers
04:47but really really nice colors and you're supposed to get a lot of them here's more i'll still be at the back
04:54here and then on down the front i've left a space for i've got perennial geraniums which will come back
05:01every year and they spread as well so they should spill out over the the edges there and another flocks
05:12there and another one there see what else we have on here more recognition around this way here i have
05:21a michaelmas daisy which is shoot it's called purple dome it's from new england in america it's where it's
05:28native but it should form a big purple dome in late summer autumn time and that'll be like daisy like
05:38purple daisies just be covered on them apparently and then here we have a couple of dahlias that were
05:44grown from seed these are the purple butterfly scabiosa there's three of them it's a perennial type
05:56and these are all the little phloxes and this one here is a chrysanthemum a pink and white chrysanthemum
06:04which is a perennial one as well so there's plenty in here and it just really has to be given time
06:10now they bed on and do its thing hopefully they all survive
06:26and this one here is a chrysanthemum