Love ’em, leave ’em
Low-maintenance beauties that top Mark Cullen’s list
No doubt you have big plans this weekend to weed and water your garden. What a silly idea. No one should stand at the end of a hose watering plants on a beautiful summer weekend.
Here are some of my favourite plants requiring minimal moisture.
That being said, any new plant you put in requires watering for the first few weeks after planting. And you can plant these now — or any time through the gardening season — and enjoy them for (almost) ever.
1. Hemerocallis (day lilies). The most popular day lily of them all, Stella D’Oro, has been in bloom for three weeks and no doubt you have been visually hit by their stun-gun of yellow orange blossoms. Day lilies are almost completely insect- and disease-free, grow in a variety of soils, and require very little water to look good and perform well. They bloom summer through early fall, depending on the variety, and require a minimum of six hours of sun to perform well. Not true members of the lily family, they are actually related to asparagus in the tree of life. Now you know.
2. Real geraniums. Annual geraniums are not geraniums at all; they are members of the genus Pelargonium. Like day lilies, someone thought it would be fun to confuse us by attaching a common name that has nothing to do with the official classification.
The real geranium ( Geranium spp.) is a perennial garden performer and I love it. When people ask me how to grow grass under their Norway maple or some other aggressive, moisture-sucking tree (which is nearly impossible), I recommend planting perennial geraniums instead. It is a great low-growing, perennial flowering ground cover or rockery plant and all members of the family tolerate dryness. Best planted in sun to part shade.
3. Echinacea. The stuff that you ingest when you feel a cold coming on is derived from the root of a native plant by the same name. The common name is purple coneflower. The original species is — naturally — purple. It produces “cones” while flowering that are loaded with pollen and (later in the season) seeds. Butterflies forage on the pollen in droves and gold finches harvest the seeds throughout fall and winter.
This plant will bloom from late July through August and fade to seed in September and October.
4. Ornamental grasses. In purely botanical terms, grasses are a huge family of grain-type plants that include corn, broom (the kind that bristles of your house broom are made of ) and ornamental grasses like Miscanthus spp., blue fescue (of the Festuca genus), Calamagrostis spp., Pennisetum spp., and many others.
All ornamental grasses are drought-tolerant and therefore a good choice when seeking to reduce the demands for water in your garden. If you would like to start a collection, you might consider starting with blue fescue (reaching 25 centimetres in height) and slowly graduating to the Panicum virgatum (Heavy Metal) when you are ready for a monster that matures to over two metres tall.
Note: when buying ornamental grasses, always ask for “clumping” varieties that behave themselves in your garden. Some types can be very aggressive travellers.
5. Hostas. If you don’t know it by name, you will know it the moment that someone points it out to you. There are over 7,000 varieties in the family so I won’t bore you with a long list of recommended varieties. Suffice it to say that I have never met a hosta that I didn’t like. The newest ones are slug-resistant (read the label when buying) and the selection varies from short little squirts about 15 centimetres high (Blue Mouse Ears) to 1-1/2-metrewide giants (Blue Mammoth and Wide Brim).
All hostas enjoy a period of dryness between watering and are low maintenance. Hostas also tolerate up to half a day of shade.
Low-maintenance plants thrive on neglect. While you will want to keep weeds out of their way, you will water and fertilize them less than other plants in your garden (or containers). They are generally insect- and disease-free and they come back year after year, most of them improving with each passing year.
What is not to like? Mark Cullen is an expert gardener, author, broadcaster and garden editor of Reno & Decor magazine. Get his free monthly newsletter at markcullen.com. Watch him on CTV Canada AM every Wednesday at 8:45 a.m. Email him at groundskeeper@markcullen.com. Follow him on Twitter @MarkCullen4 and Facebook.