Perennials are easy to grow and bring beauty and life to your garden year after year. They are highly beneficial plants. Along with trees and shrubs, they contribute to soil health, prevent erosion, and provide habitat and food for pollinators, butterflies, and hummingbirds.

Below are 18 native or introduced perennials selected not only for their suitability to Indiana’s climate, but also for their ease of care, hardiness, and high performance. Perennials truly are the backbone of a garden, and they are easy to love!

Long spells of endless sunshine might seem like your garden’s idea of a good time, but, like most things in life, moderation is key — even for plants. With all that sun can come high temps and a lack of humidity that leaves your flowers, veggies, and herbs wilted or dried up, as well as defenseless against disease and pests. You can help prevent heat-stressed plants and keep your own cool, too. So, put on a wide-brimmed hat, grab your water bottle, and help your greenery stay, well, green!

Here’s how to handle it when Mother Nature shows up with high temps and just won’t leave.

Buzzing bees, fluttering butterflies and zipping hummingbirds are a joy to watch as they flit from flower to flower, but they do more than entertain. They actually help fuel life on this planet.

The tomatoes in your salad, the herbs in your soup, the apples in your pie — none of these would exist without the work of pollinators. These vital creatures will make your yard their home when you roll out the welcome mat with a pollinator garden.

In planning a garden, successful gardeners aim for a long-blooming season. They want to see a variety of flowers in continuous bloom — one starting when another is fading —to enjoy an all-season multi-hued flower show! And in pollinator gardens, a primary goal is to provide food(pollen and nectar) to nourish pollinators such as bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds, from early spring to late fall.

How do gardeners — and you — do that? Start with a Seasonal Flowering Times Planning Tool!

In her blog, A Wild Garden, Alicia Houk presented this spreadsheet, or compilation, of Midwest seasonal blooming times for several species of plants. You can use this tool to create a continuous color pollinator garden.

Select the flowers you wish to plant according to their peak blooming periods, as listed in the spreadsheet, taking care to choose flowers that bloom at different times from spring to fall. The blooming periods listed are specific to the Midwest region of the US, so they are appropriate forIndiana gardeners.

[NOTE: With a little additional research you can also select plants that fall into Indiana’s USDA hardiness zones, 5b to6a. Your local garden center can be of great assistance in your planning.]

Use the tool to make a list of your desired plants, and then organize them by bloom time. Now you can create a picture of how you want your garden to look over time, which plants will peak when, and as Alicia notes, understand “how biodiverse the flowers are at any given moment, from spring through fall.” This is especially helpful in keeping pollinators continuously nourished and happy to assist in your plants’ healthy growth.

For more tips in attracting pollinators, check out our Pollinator Garden flip book above. And happy planting! 🌻

Click on photo above to download spreadsheet.

Click on photo above to learn more about planting a long-blooming pollinator garden.

“The glory of gardening: hands in the dirt, head in the sun, heart with nature. To nurture a garden is to feed not just the body, but the soul.” – Alfred Austin

The joy of a garden is that you can watch it grow over many months. Here are the things to consider when you’re starting off.

Meet Phil and Jessie, your hosts of Making Our Roots, a garden to table series. In this episode you will hear how their trip to Alaska taught them the lessons they needed to learn to live off the land. If they can garden in Alaska, you can garden at home! Learn their secrets and cuisines you can make right from your backyard!

Our 10,000 square foot Garden Center is filled with everything you will need to cultivate your garden from flowers, plants, grasses and shrubs, not too mention the free expert advice! We also have a great selection of yard accents from windmills, to gorgeous pots, lawn ornaments and MORE!

Come over to your Hometown Garden Center! We’re here to help you with all the advice and materials that you need.
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“Starting to plan a garden from scratch can be a daunting task. Good design is about mastering the dimensions in any garden: space, scale, texture, harmony, color, structure, light, dark, charm, features, romance, sense of place, history, and so on. But once you get going, it’s not about strict rules, but developing instincts to guide you over time.

The joy of a garden is that you can watch it grow over many years. Here are the things to consider when you’re starting off.” – Elizabeth Howe, Design and Trends Expert for White’s Ace Hardware