If you are like me, you may have started gardening by planting a small vegetable garden. A vegetable garden is nice as it provides a bounty of produce, but it can at times seem to look very dull. Then I discovered how to brighten it up with some color by planting perennials. It really is very easy to have a perennial garden.

A friend advised me that a perennial garden would add beautiful color to my garden and I wouldn’t have to redo it every year like with other types of gardens. That sounded good to me so I gave it a try and loved the results.

You must have good drainage in your soil for perennial gardens to grow properly. They will not grow if the soil they are in stays saturated for long periods of time. A raised bed can alleviate this problem or you can dig a trench in the ground fill it with some crushed rock and then put a layer of soil back on top. To determine if you need to go to these measures, test your soil. Dig a hole in the ground where you want your garden to be and fill it with water. The next day fill it again and check it later in the day if the soil in the hole is still wet, you will need to improve the drainage in that area by using one of the two above methods.

With perennials it is possible to have blooms nearly year round. With careful planning and some research you will have an unending array of colorful blooms in your garden. Plan out your garden area so that when one plant starts to wither and die, another one pops up and blooms to take its place. If you plant your seeds just right this will happen year after year.

Now if you don’t have the time to do all that research and planning yourself you can look for ready-made seed packages that are suitable for your local area. Using plants that thrive well in your area will give you better results in your garden. Work with nature not against it. If you still are not sure visit a local greenhouse or nursery and ask the staff for help. They usually are very happy to help you pick out the best flowers to give you the type of garden you want. The staff will also very likely be highly knowledgeable about what plants thrive in your local area.

A perennial garden benefits from the use of mulch. It will help reduce the amount of work you have to do in pulling weeds and maintaining proper drainage. If you live in even a slightly wooded area you can use bark and pine needles as your mulch, at no cost to you. If you don’t you should be able to find the right mulch at your local nursery and even home stores that carry gardening supplies. You can use fertilizer when first planting your garden, but once the flowers start their cycle of blooming you shouldn’t need very much fertilizer at all.

When planting the seeds, you should space them out in small separate clumps according to the directions. Perennials tend to spread out and if you have too many too close together then they will end up trying to share the water and nutrients in the soil and will choke each other out. As you plant them, throw in a little bit of weak fertilizer to help the seeds get started. With a little bit of care in the beginning you should start to see flowers blooming up that will return year after year.