what are your fav. perrenials that youve wintersown

13 years ago

I need to add more perrenials this year to my wintersowing list and I am drawing a blank here,most of what I wintersowed last year was annuals with a few exceptions but definetly would like to add more perennials.even if they dont bloom the first year...need suggestions please

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Comments (19)

countrycarolyn
13 years ago
May I toss in some suggestions that I am planning on wintersowing?? I absolutely adore drought tolerant, long bloomers. So these I mention I am growing with thinking they fall into that category. At least that is what I have read. A long bloom period to me is spring to fall. These also qualify for winter sowing also.

Ratibida columnifera (Mexican hat)
Monarda (Panorama Series Red Shades)
Linaria vulgaris (Butter n Eggs)
Mimulus ringens (monkey flower)
Berlandiera (Chocolate Flower)
Scabiosa (pincushion)
Delphinium grandiflorum, blue mirror (Delphinium, Blue Mirror)

Not such long bloomers but some I am looking forward to that are still drought tolerant.

Phlox Paniculata pink
Phlox Paniculata purple
Verbascum Phoeniceum (Purple Mullein)
Veronica teucrium (royal blue speedwell)
Fritillaria Persica
Adenophora (ladybells)
Agastache foeniculum (Lavender Hyssop)

Here are some more that need moisture to survive. How I deal with that in my gardens is I plant them in partial shade. Morning sun afternoon shade. They still bloom and have the appropriate color. Only things I do not do this with are things that may suffer from powdery mildew, like phlox.

Lathyrus latifolius (Perennial Sweet Pea) pink
Lathyrus latifolius (Perennial Sweet Pea) white
Lathyrus latifolius (Perennial Sweet Pea) red
Celandine Poppy
Aquilegia Canandensis (native columbine
Lobelia Cardinals (Cardinal Flower)
Lobelia siphilitica (Blue Cardinal Flower)
Passiflora incarnata
Lysimachia atropurpurea Beaujolais (purple gooseneck loosestrife) I need to make sure I can winter sow this one.

All perennials!!
countrycarolyn
13 years ago
That Mimulus ringens (monkey flower) needs moisture my bad.

Add Lupinus Perennis (Wild Lupine) to the list though.

I am sure there are more that I overlooked but there is a few of them.
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gardenweed_z6a
13 years ago
These that I WS get top honors:

Gaura lindheimerii/wandflower
Penstemon digitalis 'Mystica'/beardtongue
Verbascum/mullein
Alchemilla mollis/lady's mantle
Platycodon grandiflora/balloon flower
Lychnis chalcedonica/Maltese cross
Belamcanda chinensis/blackberry lily
Gaillardia/blanket flower
Heuchera/coral bells
Alcea/Hollyhock
Iberis/candytuft
Liatris spicata/spike gayfeather
Lupine
Rudbeckia hirta/black-eyed Susan 'Autumn Colors'
Stokesia/Stoke's aster
Tanacetum pyrethrum/Painted daisy
countrycarolyn
13 years ago
That Iberis smells wonderful!! Mine is on its second year and I just didn't realize till here in the last month how wonderful it smelled. I am standing around it or I will walk by it and I catch this wonderful scent. Finally I figured out it was coming from this plant, I love this little plant. Saving seed from it though seems to be a little challenging.

{{gwi:358689}}

Oh that gaura is another one I am going to grow and my gailardia is awesome in my garden. It blooms during drought and while I am letting it go to seed.
tiffy_z5_6_can
13 years ago
Some of my favourites...

Echinacea - Don't expect to get the parent but do expect to get a good plant!
Asclepias - Incarnata is my fav for a perennial right now, but that may change once others mature. Host plant for Monarchs.
Buddleia - Can't beat the perfume in late summer and the butterflies too!
Heliopsis - Both Lorraine Sunshine and Summer Sun are great.
Lavenders - Your warmer zone permits you to have a greater variety than I could possibly have. I'm envious...
Lynchnis - Any variety from Coronaria to Chalcedonica to Viscaria Splendens Fever to Flo Jovis, to ...
Rudbeckia Fulgida Goldstrum - Stunning day neutral bloomer.
Aquilegias - Early bloomers with lots of variety, shape, and colour for semi-shade gardens.
Eupatorium - mid-late season bloomer. Great back of the border plant.
Baptisia Australis - Blue/purple flowers early summer with foliage which has staying power. Full sun. Looks like a shrub when mature.
Veronicastrum - Good leaf power, wonderful candle-like blooms which are loved by butterflies and bees.
Geums - front of the border plant with striking colours of reds and oranges. Leaf also has staying power. (As a matter of fact I don't grow any plant of which the leaves don't have all season resistance. Leaves are the background to all plants and they have to perform for me to be happy with the plant. :O)
Hostas - It's an adventure to grow these. You never know what you are going to get.
Digitalis - I know they are biennial, but my gardens cannot be without!
Vernonia (sp?) - New York Ironweed. Second year for me and I like!!
Hardy Hibiscus - If you don't grow these in your zone then there is something wrong with you. Seriously, they are truly beautiful. Mine just barely start to bloom and the frost zaps them so you'd better grow them for me...
Helenium - Another one where you never know what you are going to get in colour bloom, but a good plant. Just grow something in front that will cover 2 feet at the base because they can look straggly on the bottom but Oh! those blooms!
Agastache - Nothing like the smell of Licorice when you are gardening. :O) Nice.
Monarda - Always and adventure. The hummingbirds love this plant. Got space? It might spread but well worth it.
Astilbe - Got a semi-shady spot? Moist soil? These are a must.

Also, you might like to consider shrubs? A tree perhaps? I have 3 Weigelas (Middendorfiana) planted in the gardens courtesy of winter sowing, several Rose of Sharon on my parents property, two Azaleas, one Japanese Maple - so tiny I'm hoping it makes it through the winter - and several Katsura trees.

Have fun whatever you decide!! Oh, and don't forget to sow Hardy Hibiscus...
kimka
13 years ago
My favorite perennials to wintersow are:
Foxgloves--all of them--the camelot series, candy mountain, grecian, etc., even if they are really biennials, they'll reseed so they look like perennials after the first couple of years.

Jacob's ladder
Cornflower
Aquilegias, again all of them although I like woodside gold and the long spurred ellow ones right now best

and my new favorite is Prairie Splendor coneflower, which germinated great and mostly did as advertised by blooming the first year from seed.
tomva
Original Author
13 years ago
You all are awesome,thankyou,thankyou,thankyou,you've given me some fantastic choices..Ive been googling like crazy,gonna be a busy winter again,yay...
tepelus
13 years ago
Countrycarolyn, I hate to say this, but I think your Iberis might be Sweet Alyssum, Lobularia maritima. Mine smells super awesome now, and is flowering more heavily now that it's gotten cooler. I could barely detect the scent in the summer, but now I stand several feet away and smell them. I'll have to grow more next year.

Karen
gardenweed_z6a
13 years ago
Karen - I did a double take at the iberis and thought it must be alyssum too but I didn't say anything because I'm definitely no expert! ;-p It just looks a WHOLE LOT like my alyssum.

Tom - do you need perennial seeds to WS? I've been harvesting like a mad woman so I've got plenty to share. Let me know if you'd like a variety via SASBE.

Eileen
mnwsgal
13 years ago
Seems that I'm always ws a new variety of these:

Perennial salvias
Agastache
Aquilegia
Asclepia
Buddleia
Clematis
Daisies
Delphinium
Dianthus
Digitalis
Echinacea
Hardy geraniums
Heuchera
Hibiscus
Penstemon
Primula
Verbascum

I wondered about iberis blooming at this time of the year as it is a spring bloomer here. Alyssum does look a bit like iberis and has a wonderful fragrance.
austinnhanasmom
13 years ago
My favorite this year (new to me) -

Lunaria - pink

This was it's 2nd year and it finally bloomed!
countrycarolyn
13 years ago
LOL, To Funny!! Seriously I was thinking you know, that could be assylum Carolyn. I was looking at some pictures of some seeds I had and one was a picture of assylum, I thought hmmm that kinda looks like that little plant out by my sidewalk, lol. I thought surely if it was someone would of said something where I posted that picture. LOL, to funny cause you guys did catch it. I tell ya see that is what happens when I direct sow things. Last year or the year before I knew I had dsed assylum and irebis. Well this came back and I had the purple bloom to die out after the first year. So I figured this was the irebis. I guess this goes to show you another good reason for container sowing, is so much better than dsing. LOL

I needed that laugh after the day I had!! Oh my, LOL.
gardenweed_z6a
13 years ago
Sure hated to pour water on your happy photo but it's definitely alyssum. I'm more aware of it since growing it myself for the first time this year. I'm impressed with its staying power through the drought and still blooming as fresh as a nosegay the 3rd week of October. Who could ask for anything beyond that? I shot pictures of it in August when the drought had stretched into it's third month. Just amazing.
countrycarolyn
13 years ago
Hey that is ok with me seriously, I got a kick out of it. I guess my irebis never survived, oh well. Funny thing is that I had a purple bloom come up and I still never have figured out what that was. It was cute but it didn't last.

I just assumed that little plant was irebis cause it was white and it came back the next year. LOL, so much for assuming. That is what I get for not looking it up and just tossing seeds in that bed.

LOL, one year no lie I had like a ton of seed I had no idea how I was going to grow them. So I just started throwing it in this one bed, I was like if it comes up it comes up if it doesn't oh well. I got some amazing flowers out of that and then I got some stuff I wished I never did that with, ugg. One thing I got from that was a beautiful red poppy. I have no idea what kind, I just know it was beautiful. I didn't save the seeds so I have been searching for those seeds. Well I finally found one wildflower pack that looks to have that poppy. I can't wait to grow that pack.

To sum it up I am pretty sure that may be where that assylum came from. LOL It gets bigger each year!!
countrycarolyn
13 years ago
Gardenweed, I just looked up the botanical that karen gave me for that sweet assylum, and you know it makes sense now. I mentioned I had purple flowers. Well I faintly remember the first year I grew this it looked more like yours looks. The flowers were more of a purple color then they would go white. If I am not mistaken they did that this year also in early spring, but they stopped with the purple when it warmed up. The first year mine did not bloom long at all. It bloomed earlier in the season but once it got hot it pretty much just looked like crap. This year total different story. It started blooming in the spring I am not sure on which month, but it is still blooming. The picture that I took was from that day.

Thank You, Karen!!! Awesome!!
mnwsgal
13 years ago
Alyssum self sows for me. I also take the dried stems with seeds and drag them along areas where I want alyssum the next year. I love the fragrance.

I think the white is more vigorous as also had some purple & white variety. I see a few purple blooms but most of the ones that self sowed are white. The original plants were ws three springs ago.

The extra rainfall we had this year and cooler temps allowed my alyssum to keep blooming nicely all summer/fall. I didn't even have to cut it back.

Iberis is one of those plants that doesn't grow well for me. I know I ws some two springs ago and it bloomed again this spring but I haven't seen it recently. Maybe since it is out of bloom I just haven't noticed it. Will have to search for it tomorrow. Over the years I have killed many iberis plants.
gardenweed_z6a
13 years ago
I WS iberis/candytuft from a commercial seed pack this year and got quite a few plants that I stuck in an oval bed on the boundary. It gets partly to mostly sun and the iberis seedlings did okay until the drought lengthened into two, then three months. I think it kind of went into a semi-dormant/rest period and then once we got a few drops of rain, it put on a little growth. I'm hoping they're tough enough to come through the winter. I have a two- or three- year old plant that I stuck in a broken ceramic pot that was my mother's favorite so even though it was broken, I just couldn't toss it. I turned it so the broken part was underneath, then stuck some soil + the iberis in it. Darn thing rooted through the broken part and blooms every spring.
kqcrna
13 years ago
Butterfly weed (A. tuberosa)
Snapdragons (usually last several years for me)
Coneflowers (echinaceas)
Rudbeckia hirtas (usually last about 2 years)
Lobelia cardinalis
Verbascum

I hope they all make it through this drought. My Mom has been sick for a few weeks so I have been with her, not here to water much. My garden looks awful, not sure how much is from drought but trying to hope much is just normal dormancy. I'm losing hope with each added day of drought.

Karen
lynnencfan
13 years ago
agastache - cause they made it through our wicked summer this year and the hummingbirds just love them

salvias run a very close second ......

Lynne

what are your fav. perrenials that youve wintersown

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