Serious gardeners like to use obscure terms as much as a teenager likes to text acronyms. We both do it for the same reasons, to quickly communicate with others in our sub-species and to show how hip we are. Every once and awhile we might even be guilty of using these terms to blatantly show off. What we forget however is that there is a whole group of people out there that don’t know what on earth we are talking about, and would happily shove our pretentious little phrases down our tasteful little throats. Think I’m joking? I only figured out what LOL meant three months ago – and I still haven’t a clue as to the definition of ROFL, but I’m always happy to discuss my Syringa vulgaris (read: Lilac) ad nauseum with friends who are too polite to tell me to go bury my head in the compost pile (BYHITCP). In my defense, once you start using the terminology, it’s very difficult to stop – and you can ask any teenager if you don’t believe me.
Two of the more innocuous terms most often bandied about by gardeners and non-gardeners alike are “Perennial” and “Annual”. You will see these words at the big box retailers, the small town garden centers and roadside stands. They are universally understood to be universally understood, yet I am often asked by friends to explain the difference between these two groups of plants. To make it even more difficult – “Biennial” is often stuck in with either group. LOL, what’s a self-respecting amateur gardener to do?
Well, it will always stand you in good stead if you remember that these terms are based upon a plant’s life cycle. An annual plant is one that germinates, blooms, sets seeds and dies in one year. This plant group holds some of our gardening favorites: pansies, poppies, sunflowers, and nasturtiums to name but a few. In order to confuse us, it also encompasses a group that we think of as annuals but in warmer climates live longer than the allotted annum, such as petunias and pelargoniums (garden geraniums). Allowed to live a little longer, they can make for impressive plants (flash to huge red geraniums in terracotta pots sitting on an Italian terrace), but without winter protection, you’ll understand why they are termed annuals here in Maryland. Annuals are the superstars of the garden. They are instant gratification at its finest. With deadheading, and sometimes without it, they bloom reliably all season – filling in gaps, dressing up pots and generally making you feel like summer has arrived. And as a bonus, they might just throw a bit of seed for next year’s show.
Where annuals are content to give their all in a couple of seasons and go out with a bang, perennials are the work horses. These are plants that can live anywhere from three years to thirty – and sometimes longer. Lavender, Hosta, Phlox, Bee Balm and Black-Eyed Susans all fall into this category. You’ll spend more on a perennial initially, but they are dividable over time and can even become garden thugs, crowding out weaker plants, forming gangs and collecting protection money if not duly controlled. If you’re trying to create a nice perennial border on the cheap, look around in early spring for the telling signs of mud spattered faces streaked with desperation, and you can usually get a hosta or two, twenty Shasta daisies and a wheelbarrow of common daylilies if you promise to take them out of sight of the spade-wielding owner who is frothing at the mouth.
Perennials usually only bloom between two and four weeks. With diligent deadheading, a real star might outperform that range. But perennials also bring a depth to the garden through the sheer variety of their foliage – indeed some are grown for that reason entirely. These are the plants that make up some of the bones of the garden, and one of the loveliest reasons I know for growing and sharing them is to have a piece of another person’s garden, whether it be your grandmother’s, your friend’s or a plant from a botanical garden you visited last May.
Where do biennials fall in all this classification? Well, a biennial is a plant that splits its growth into two years, the first to set leaves and the second to bloom. There are more of these than you might think. Hollyhocks, Mullein, Honesty, Dame’s Rocket, Foxgloves, Forget-me-nots – all keep you waiting a second year for a show of color. Parsley is a biennial, as is chard – but they are biennials that are often thought of as annuals because we usually eat them in their first year. Keep them going into their second spring and they will look beautiful right up to the moment in early summer that they send up a white flag in the form of a seed stalk.
So which to choose next time you are faced with an array of garden center beauties? The best gardens are those that weave these three groups together in an ever changing tapestry of color and texture – annuals for constancy, perennials for backbone and biennials for the beauty of now and the promise of later. A challenging, and often expensive mission should you choose to accept it. Or you could just buy a petunia basket and wait for me to clear out my border. I’m hoping to get to it this weekend.
So there you have it. Terminology de-mystified. And I didn’t even use any Latin. TTYL.
