How to make the most of garden centre sales

With the click over into autumn, we gardeners are rewarded with the fantastic arrival of garden centre sales. This is most exciting for those of us who spin our wheels over flowering perennials, which bring our spaces so much goodness in summer and often into autumn.

Right now is a terrific time to go wander the aisles (or do so virtually with your favourite online nurseries) and see if you might just stumble across a deal or two. Perennials are already great investments in that, after a year or two, you can dig up the mature clumps, divide them into “new” plants with a sharp spade and re-plant, drastically multiplying your garden stock.

Delicate crimson tops of knautia macedonica float around in my perennial garden.

“I like to think of flowering perennials as the delicious, slowly unveiling “decoration” of my garden each year. They even “put themselves away” with minimal help and a quick chop each winter. They are your garden’s party earrings The lipstick that it puts on to feel great on a gloomy day and your own offering to Mother Nature’s bees, moths and butterflies.”

One of the biggest adjustments I have had to make to my life, in ode of my yearly flower garden, is letting go of instant gratification and planting perennials in autumn with the aim to please my eyes, sometimes a whole year away. Trust me... you will thank yourself!

Nigella …commonly known as “love-in-the-mist”

Bright crazy perennial rudbeckia with echinacea, geums, fennel, sanguisorba officinalis and scabiosa.

YOUR GARDEN, YOUR STYLE

Picking plants can be quite overwhelming, whether it be your first time, starting from scratch or working to transform your garden into one that personally makes your heart sing. I have learnt (after my beginnings of buying "one" of every plant that attracted me like a magpie) that curating beds by repeating plants of fewer varieties gives a really rich and luxurious feeling.

You might prefer a limited soft palette or brave, colour chaos, just don't forget to consider the mix of texture vs shape of bloom vs foliage. Finding variation in flower and plant size will give you a beautiful painterly effect. The cherry on the top here is educating yourself on “when” each plant you are interested in flowers, to enable pairing it with others that can take the bloom baton once it is finished.

Long flowering white penstamon with phlomis, geum and veronicastrum.

Brilliant and beautiful astrantia

THINGS TO CONSIDER IN YOUR PERENNIAL SELECTIONING

• Read the heights that each plant is expected to mature to, so you can imagine how all these new plants might work together, or where they can slot into your existing garden bed.

• Pay close attention to how much sun they need. I have in the past (and continually push the limits) planted sun lovers in shade and acted surprised when they didn't grow at all, or instead, horizontal to the ground, searching for light. Not that pretty a result, as it turns out.

• The plant you are considering at the garden centre might be flowering, but looking a bit sad. Don’t worry! It is simply approaching the end of its season, before it puts itself to bed for the winter. Which is exactly what summer flowering perennials do. This means you are unlikely to get much pleasure from it this year, but even if it looks like it "dies" once planted, it is most likely receding to be dormant and grow its root base ready for next year.

• You don't have to know your purchased plant’s final destination in the garden. You can plant it anywhere, ideally in the position it prefers in regard to sunlight, then dig up and move in spring when you can see the gaps better. Perennials are particularly easy going in this way.

Planting out garden centre finds in autumn. Many I have moved in spring to other positions.

Sanguisorba obtusa and verbena bonariensis

Pink Japanese anemones

SOME OF MY FAVOURITE PERENNIALS

For flowering from late spring/early summer flowering:

Astilbe, delphiniums, verbena bonariensis, verbena rigida, geums, alchemilla mollis, shasta daisy, phlomis, nemesia, aquilegia, foxgloves, lupins, astrantia, filipendula and penstemon amongst others.

For mid-summer / early autumn flowering:

Heleniums, echinacea, rudbeckia, knautia macedonica, scabiosa, thalictrum, salvia, sanguisorba officinalis, sanguisorba obtusa, achillea, gaura, Japanese anemones, hydrangeas, asters, centaurea, persicaria, echinops and eryngium, but I could go on.

While not all of these plants will be available in the autumn sales, at least you can do some research to get your hands on them in springtime!

This article was first featured in my Stuff ‘Homed’ gardening column for beginners and The Press on March 18th 2021
All words and images are my own, shot in my garden in Christchurch, New Zealand.