Brian Minter: Exciting new perennials lift our spirits and inspire

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Right about now, we all need a little something to lift our spirits and to inspire our gardens for the coming spring, summer and fall gardening seasons. Some exciting new perennials may just do the trick.

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During the past year, we experienced a range of weather extremes, and our plants have gone through a lot. Overall, perennials seem to have fared the best, and with our changing realities, they have become the go-to plants.

Today’s garden plants must handle not only a significant amount of moisture, but they also need to be much more weather resistant, particularly, more heat-and-drought tolerant. They must also have fewer disease issues, be environmentally friendly and be able to support beneficial wildlife, such as pollinating insects and birds.

Gardeners’ expectations are also evolving. We want sequential flowering, from early in the season until frost and beyond. We want our plants to provide blooms for nectar and pollen and to supply both foliage and spent flowers for nesting material. We want less staking, dead heading and pruning. We expect better disease and insect tolerance. A longer flowering period is also on our list of must-haves, and, because so many of us now garden only in containers, we want plants that combine well with a wide range of other plants. If we stop to think about it, the plants we want for today’s gardens need to tick a lot of boxes.

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A few years ago, at a conference in Montreal, I jokingly told a group of international breeders and propagators that “the plants of tomorrow, to be successful, need to be super-hardy, tolerate any weather, flower incessantly, produce edible fruits for both wildlife and us, provide pollen and nectar, have attractive foliage and if possible, be wonderfully fragrant.” Well, as it turns out, these folks already knew all that, and today, many of our amazing new plants are far more multi-tasking.

There is a new plant family called SunFern, which is really a Russian wormwood or Artemisia gmelinii. Hardy to Zone 4a, this artemisia has a fern-like texture resembling an evergreen shrub. Growing only 14 to 18 inches in height, it’s a great heat-and-drought-tolerant accent plant that combines well with other plants. Although non-flowering, the two initial varieties, Arcadia and Olympia, have attractive medium and rich dark green foliage, respectively. They received rave reviews at last year’s plant trials.

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I heard a rumour out of the Netherlands, some years back, that nepeta or catmint was pushing lavender as one of the most popular perennials. Innovative breeding has certainly improved this pollinator-friendly perennial in many ways. Growing 24 to 28 inches tall and hardy to Zone 4, the Whispurr series from Darwin Perennials in Holland is a prime example. Both the blue and pink varieties bloom from April to September. New this year is the compact (10 to 12 inches) N. Picture Purrfect. Its rich, blue-purple flowers bloom two weeks earlier than other Nepeta faassenii types, and it flowers continuously from June into September. Kitten Around is another hardy (Zone 3), low variety that grows only 12 to 14 inches tall and has long-blooming, periwinkle like, blue flowers. Proven Winners Perennial of the Year for 2021 was Cat’s Pajamas, a rich indigo blue nepeta that blooms from early summer well into fall. Because nepetas blend beautifully with so many other perennials, it’s not hard to see why these catmints have exploded both in popularity and in the sheer number of new varieties on the market.

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My favourite combination is compact pink shrub roses with any blue variety of nepeta. If you’re up to date on colour trends, Pantone’s Colour of the Year for 2022 is Veri Peri, which can be nicely represented by dark blue nepetas.

For a touch of silver in your garden, last year’s introduction of Blossom of Snow edelweiss almost went unnoticed. Leontopodium has always been regarded as a novel alpine, meant for specialty rock gardens. This new variety, however, is quite a vigorous perennial that performs beautifully in containers. In Switzerland’s major cities, window boxes, that look attractive all summer long, are filled with edelweiss, along with other silver foliage plants, like artemisias.

There can never be enough white in our gardens. During perfect weather last April, candytuft produced breathtaking displays in many gardens. Iberis has enjoyed a huge upswing in popularity because of its early blooming habit and the way it accents other early blooming perennials, compact rhododendrons and azaleas and other flowering shrubs. Most varieties are hardy to Zones 5 and 6. Iberis is a wonderful pollinator plant and makes a good-looking ground cover, growing from four to 10 inches tall. It has an attractive, low spreading habit and a light, refreshing perfume. The longest flowering variety is I. Summer Snowdrift. Hardy only to Zone 6, it’s a little more tender, but amazingly, it blooms from May into October. It’s heat tolerant and is being used as an alternative to lobularia. Iberis Snowsation has the largest flowers of any candytuft and blooms from early February until April. There are many other varieties, all featuring attractive evergreen mounds the balance of the year, and all are appreciated by pollinating insects.

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There’s also a love affair going on with blue salvias, both as an annual and a perennial. Unfortunately for annuals, the newer perennial salvias are acting just like them, only better. Salvia nemorosa is the well-known, very hardy variety that has great heat-and-drought tolerance and is a magnet for bees. A new series from Darwin Perennials in Holland, called the Marvels, lives up to the name. This series is the first of two perennial salvias to bloom from March to September. Available in three colours, Blue Marvel is the darkest, Sky Blue is a mid-blue and Rose Marvel, which has the largest flowers of any pink nemorosa salvia, is a rich deep rose. The slightly taller Lyrical series stretches up to about 24 inches and provides four colours to enjoy over the same long-flowering period. In addition to two blues, there’s a bright pink called Lyrical Rose and a Lyrical White.

A newer veronica also fits nicely into this category of very resilient perennials. The Moody Blues series has six colours, and all break the mold by extending the flowering season from May into October. These hardy, Zone 4, compact spike speedwells are very pollinator friendly and stand up well in summer heat. Forever Blue, which is a little taller at 18 inches, flowers from June until October.

When gardens thaw out and you’re ready to plant some versatile new perennials, these and many other varieties will add so much to this year’s colour.