How to Choose Area for a Perennial Garden

Series Summary

Starting a garden involves much more than just sticking a few plants in the ground. Think of it more in terms of running a business. Each of the plants must have their special skills and needs to best produce the look you are trying to achieve. Your job is to find the most effective positions and relationships in your garden office to make the company work most efficiently. One plant may mope unless it gets the office with the most sunlight. Another one may prefer shade and tries to steal all the water and attention from everyone else. Still another may only work well with its own office. Your job as a gardener is to determine the ideal business relationship among your workers. Once that has been accomplished, all the neighbors/investors will start to take notice.

Our gardening expert will explain how to set up your perfect perennial plant business. Learn which plants go together, how to position the plants for just the right amount of sun, and how to determine if your adjustment has been successful. Are the flowers, shrubs and grasses happy after all of the work you have put in to meet their needs? Once you have mastered the basic care and maintenance of your garden, then you can concentrate on working toward exactly the look you want. Martha Cycz discusses what plants you need to achieve your ideal color schemes. And as with all businesses, competitors, or in this case invasive plants, want a piece of the action. Learn how to keep them away and keep your garden business thriving.

Video Transcript

"How to choose the right area to begin perennial gardening. Well there's lot of factors involved. How big you have a plot of land, where the sun is. If this is your first try, sometimes you can get different plants that are given to you from friends. With me, I happen to buy this house about 25 years ago and I had never done perennial gardening before, but lots of my closest friends did and they were all anxious for me to get going. To choose a spot it's really hard. In this particular piece of land we have lots of pricker bushes and fields. I thought well how do I get started. Then I happen to go into the garage and I found this old wagon wheel. One of the fundamental things about perennial gardening is you have to have a focal point to begin with. Sometimes you just put a bunch of plants in the ground and your eye doesn't have a place to start and follow. I thought well put this wagon wheel in the ground and we'll go from here. This was a little corner of the lawn. So the wagon wheel started, then we put in some fairly tall shrugs that kind of encircled the wagon wheel. Little by little added some flowers. Some of these flowers as you can see, they all bush out to be twice the size in one year. Added some other plants and probably within 3 years we had the beginning of a perennial garden. After you get started, then you just add. You go to gardening centers, you shop with friends. I have a group of friends and we just switch plants around and that's how I began and that's how anybody can begin. "