Blend Annuals with Perennials
By Keesa Renee DuPre
Photo: © Elena Elisseeva - Dreamstime
 In the garden, balance is essential. The height, color, growth habits, sunlight and water requirements of different plants must work together to create a harmonious whole. One way of achieving this balance is by blending annuals and perennials in the same garden.
Annuals are short-lived plants that tend to grow to maturity quickly—usually in a few weeks. They are planted in the spring, grow in the summer, and die back at first frost in the fall. Self-seeding annuals may create new plants from seed next spring, but once the plant dies, it's dead.
Perennials, on the other hand, come back year after year. Many perennials continue growing for ten or twenty years. Rosemary is a good example of a small-pot herb that, if planted in the ground and given good growing
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conditions, can continue growing for twenty years or more—eventually becoming quite a shrub!
Because you don't have to replant them every year, perennials can dramatically cut the cost of gardening. Perennials may die back in the winter, but they come back as healthy as ever in the spring, and from the same plant. Self-seeding annuals may grow new plants year after year, but the original plant is dead.
Because annuals have only one year to reproduce, they tend to bloom almost continuously through the spring and summer, creating as many flowers—and therefore as many seeds—as they can before they die.
Perennials, on the other hand, have twenty years or more to reproduce. They're not in any hurry. Perennials may bloom once or twice a year, sometimes for only a week, sometimes for four to six weeks. But they don't bloom continuously the way annuals do.
Blending annuals with perennials gives your garden some of the balance it needs. You will still have to work out colors, growth habits and all the rest, of course, but the annuals will give your garden color and life all summer long, freeing the perennials to bloom at their appointed time. |
