Make The Most Of The Money You Have To Spend On Your Garden With These Beauties!
Gardening doesn’t have to cost a fortune, especially when the right plants keep giving year after year. YouGarden TV’s Rebecca Edwards shares her penny-saving tips for getting more from every plant. She focuses on long-flowering, low-maintenance perennials that bring months of colour, while helping you fill your borders for less.
“Gardening doesn’t have to be expensive, but it can be if you don’t pick your plants carefully.
“Long flowering and long-lived perennial plants as well as evergreens and plants you can propagate, or plants that will happily self-seed are a wonderful way of being able to fill your garden with seasonal interest for long periods of time, and, with the right care, for many years, sometimes even decades!
“There are even additional ways that you can stretch those plants even further! By taking cuttings or dividing the plants every couple of years in either autumn or spring, you can fill other gaps in the border for free. All it takes is a little know-how and a small amount of graft.
“The added benefit – you feel that wonderful sense of achievement that we all get from gardening, to nurture and grow something beautiful whilst also making a beautiful outdoor space where you and your family can connect and spend time together.
“Here are five of my favourite perennial plants, picked for a few different reasons, either because they are long flowering, or because that can be divided or can easily take cuttings from. Plus, they are all low maintenance and fully winter hardy.
“Annuals are fantastic, and can have a place in every garden, but if you’re gardening on a budget, fill your garden as much as possible with amazing perennial plants” – Rebecca Edwards
“Geranium ‘Rozanne’ is well known for its ease of care and long flowering nature. It’s one of my favourite plants in my garden; flowers constantly from June through to November and it’s one of the lowest maintenance plants of all. As a winter hardy herbaceous perennial plant it disappears in winter but reliably comes back each and every year. It grows to around 50 x 50cm and can easily be divided in spring or autumn allowing the roots to re-establish before any extreme temperatures.
“Erigeron is another one of my favourites, and I always talk about this in relation to Geranium Rozanne, having planted these next to each other and loving the flowering combination. Erigeron flowers from May through to November, a really long flowering season, it’s totally hardy and happily self-seeds, so you always have a plentiful supply of free plants.
“Verbena bonariensis is another plant that happily self seeds, once you’ve got this in the garden you will always have a wonderful supply of free plants that can either be left alone, relocated or removed. This one will add sophisticated height to borders without taking over.
“Perennial Wallflowers, in particular ‘Bowles’s Mauve’ is probably the longest flowering plant I have in the garden, it is one of the first to give a full and amazing display, and one of the last to fade, so the value of having this in the garden is undeniable. The evergreen foliage remains year round and it isn’t bothered by the cold weather. It is a shorter-lived perennial plant, but cutting can be taken to create new plants meaning that you can always have a plentiful supply of this fantastic plant.
“Gaura ‘Siskiyou Pink’ is a fabulous cottage garden style beauty with its tall stems and beautiful pink flowers, flowering from May until October and reaching between 2-3ft height and spread it is a stunning plant. Perennial and winter hardy, so you can have this beauty in your garden year after year, and can be propagated by cuttings in early to mid summer.
“Annuals are fantastic, and can have a place in every garden, but if you’re gardening on a budget, fill your garden as much as possible with amazing perennial plants, pick long-flowering varieties, and check which ones can be propagated to make new plants, it’s not as difficult as you might think.”
