Perennials1

Perennials: The playful rainbow of my garden from May to June: updated 23 May, 2012

Perennials are such a joy to have, as most of them require minimal maintenance, live a relatively long life and most important of all keep surprising you throughout the summer. Over the years, I have planted many types of perennials (trying to restrict my urge to buy diverse gorgeous annuals). The trick is taking into account the blooming period of each perennial type so that by the time one type dies out, another comes to life. This way your flowerbed(s) are always beautiful and colorful. By the way I am far from an expert in gardening, but I do have my own share of experimenting and I absolutely LOVE gardening.  Here are some pictures and reports from my yard:

In Montreal (zone 5), tulips and narcissus bulbs come to full growth and bloom from end of April and mid May, depending how warm the weather might be (1).

They are still in bloom, when palm cherries’ leave turn red and gradually bloom their pink and scented little flowers. These lovely flowers last only about 15 days unfortunately (2).

Next come the hardy and “invasive” iris, again the flowers won’t last beyond 1-12 days, and they make excellent cut flowers for you vase (3).

Columbine is the name of this tall delicate flower in picture 4, I have four different colors of them in one of my flowerbeds, and they keep rejuvenating themselves each year through their seeds.   For a long time I was convinced that pansy was an annual. Nope! My bi-colored pansies keeps coming up every year.

My gillyflowers  start blooming from Mid June and keep it up right to the end of July.  Sometime, I get another round of flowers in Mid August!  These, too, reproduce themselves through the seeds they shed on the earth.

Finally  – for this period of the year, is the night blooming eglantines. I did not even plant them myself, but I love their deep pink and heavenly fragrance which reminds of Kerman (Iran) and its rose fields and the whole process of extracting rosewater from the very similar types of flowers.

Simple gardening tips:

• Prepare and work in your garden one step at the time, so it won’t exhaust you. Do so in harmony with nature. For instance, a day after heavy rain is ideal for weeding.
• Always use insect repellent before going to the garden to start working. Nasty insect bites could take out all the pleasure at the very least!
• Direct, mid day sun, is good only for the plants; not a good time to water, to cut flowers or to work for long hours without protection.
• Use environment friendly pesticides and compost.

Well, keep busy in the garden and stay tuned, there are much more flowers to come soon!