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Multitasking is the middle name for most gardeners for they are juggling family, home, and careers. The main reason they do such a great job in their gardens is
Time Saving Flowerbed Tips
1. Garden Art
Invest in a piece of garden art as a year around focalpoint. Art objects made of metal or cement are the best outdoor materials for High Mountain gardens for
2. Plant easy-care perennials
All experienced gardeners know the time-saving troopers in any garden are the long-living, reliable perennials that return better, year-after-year. Plants like hosta, daylilies, and peonies build a dependable care-free foundation and make do without deadheading and a minimum of water.
Avoid plants that spread too vigorously
Convince yourself that vigorous out-of-control spreaders that can’t be mowed (like mint), need not grow in your garden (even if it was a gift from your cousin). The time-takers that leave spent foliage to be deadheaded and high-maintence, chemical-users like roses take way-to-much time.
Watch labels – zone hardiness, light, soils
Select perennials that find their comfort zone in your garden. Never assume that all plants sold locally will thrive. Often new hybrid plants have not passed a maturity test of living in Rocky Mountain gardens. When purchasing perennials, visually check plant labels for zone hardiness, sun requirements, and preferred soils for not all garden centers sell only Intermountain perennials.. Labels are still not up-to-date on things like soil pH requirements. And remember the labels probably originated from the East or West coast so would not address that perennials grow shorter and bloom later in the Rocky Mountain climate. A stroll through your own neighborhood to see what grows well is always more accurate than labels. To remember the plants’ names make your own labels with paint can stirring sticks. If they have paint on they are even better.
Avoid too many “fussy” perennials
Avoid fussy, finicky perennials. Planting easy-care perennials like those in the daisy families or sedums and veronicas in full sun are always dependable. Easy care hosta, bleeding hearts or ferns will survive forever in a shady garden. Staking tall floppy perennials like delphiniums and dahlias takes a lot of time unless it is an act of love. Using stretchy hospital or horse tape to wrap tall perennials to stakes is an easy, quick method of preventing their stems from snapping or tipping over. By fall when the stakes need removing, the tape will have deteriorated so the stretch wrap is very removable.
Pay attention to placement and season
Focus clumps of perennials in only one or two spots for a big flower color display per season. Having too many types of flowers blooming at the same time of year can appear chaotic. Plant bulbs and alpines for spring, salvia and iris for late spring, peonies bloom early summer. Most daisy family members bloom mid-summer, coneflowers and black-eyed Susans color the late summer garden and asters and sedums will fill the garden with flowers until winter. Massed plantings of these types of perennials are the most eye-catching and can be easily divided to increase the color display.
Artemisia, ‘Silver Mound’ with its feathery silver foliage is indestructible and always looks good in the garden as long as it gets a haircut before the fourth-of-July so it won’t flop open. Perennials like ‘Silver Mound’ with low zone 3 hardiness and all-season good looks are timesavers in a garden.
Focus on foliage
Choose perennials with excellent foliage for your garden. These perennials usually grow in compact shapes with foliage that stays pleasing all season like all of the Alpines, striped iris,
Iberis or candytuft blooms in partial shade in springtime. The lovely perennial forms a low mounding shrub with elegant waxy foliage that stays evergreen in winter. The only requirement of candytuft is one shearing of the spent blooms when it finishes blooming. The perennial will hold its perfect shape and foliage throughout the season and will still look lovely as the snow melts around it. Plants like Candytuft are so attractive and easy-care that they are very timesaving.
3. Choose the right fertilizer
Cut fertilization time for perennial beds to a one-time, spring slow release, pelleted fertilizer with or without pre-emergent herbicides. Applying pre-emergent in early spring about the same time as daffodils bloom will prevent weed seeds from germinating. Many fertilizers have both pre-emergent and slow-release pellets so one spring treatment will be all the flowers need.
