Stupid question alert - perennials

[Nearlyroses]

I'm new to gardening so please bear with me.

I have a few perennials I'd like to plant - some agapanthus and iris. I love the foliage as well as the flowers - but...when it dies down in winter I'm going to be left with nothing in that spot which seems a little sad - is this just how it is with perennials?
Second question if I mulch the area - do they just push through in spring? I thought mulching was supposed to prevent weeds pushing through - how does this work for perennials?

1. Yes. But you could plant spring bulbs
2. The weeds in question are seedlings (because you’ve got rid of all the clumps of perennial weeds) and they don’t have the oomph to push through. But your perennial plants will. But best to consider your mulch as soil conditioner and accept that weeding will always be with you. They’re a lot easier to pullout of crumbly mulched soil.

You usually want a mix of perennials that will die back, bulbs and then some hardier plants or evergreens what will keep their form over winter. Generally though yes you will expect your garden to have gaps in the winter and be overflowing in June.

I have some evergreen hebes that stop my beds looking completely desolate in the winter but I'm also in the mildest part of the country so most of my salvia still looks green (and even flowering) until first frost.

Then in April everything starts coming back and the beds fill in.

I really hadn’t thought this through - might put the perennials into containers instead. No so keen on spring bulbs.

planring spring bulbs is a good idea. I planted some reliably perennial bulbs so they come back each year, if you dig them up by mistake in the year when dormant, just pop them back.

and I also plant some more fun ones each year that might not come back, lots of the showy tulips won’t.

forgot me nots fill in gaps too and die off before your perennials but self seed for the next year. You could also plant a Solomon’s seal and bleeding heart, both showy in spring but then can be cut right back when your perennials start to come into their own.

Why not spring bulbs? There’s lots of different kinds from subtle to garish….

Not keen on flowers - the odd exception is fine.

I have some hellebores which provide some structure and colour in winter. The spring/summer perennials are planted around them. I also have some evergreens for a bit of winter green and trees for height and structure.

Not keen on hellebores either. The only spring bulb I like is snow-drops - that's it nothing else appeals - I have some of those. I think I will just focus on evergreen plants and plant the perennials I've bought in some containers I already have.

Alchemilla mollis lasts for ages.

You always have the option not to cut your perennials back in the Autumn, Piet Oudolf style. This is what I do. So although they die you're left with the seed heads and dry foliage over the winter for ladybirds and things to hibernate it. I love dry seed heads with frosty cobwebs on in the winter. Also a lot of perennials carry on until the hard frosts which may not really happen with our milder winters so you can just cut off the old tatty growth in spring when the new growth comes back. You're usually left with a framework of branches too, not just bare earth. It depends on the perennials you choose. I think dry iris seed heads look beautiful dry and rattling through the winter.

If you like snowdrops you might possibly like narcissus Thalia, delicate white.

There are good evergreen shrubs though - in winter/spring I appreciate my euonymus and pieris. The latter has clusters of white flowers which even if you don't like them, early bees do. In similar vein ivies, if they get big enough to flower have unshowy but beautifully scented flowers in autumn when there's not much else for the insects.

I wouldn't really class iris as perennials, they are rhizomes and the leaves don't die back over winter (at least in the climates I've gardened in, maybe in some they do?)

Also if you like agapanthus you might like alliums? There are lots of different types.

Mostly I like trees - even the ones that blossom 😂and tree terns, ground ferns, grasses, moss, bamboo (clumping and well contained), fatsia, a small pond with lilies, mint, iris and water soldiers and lavender, rosemary and thyme for the sunnier gravel areas. I accidentally stumbled upon the iris love, maybe other plants will appeal in time but for the moment the design approach of having drifts of planting repeated suits my restricted palate. I'm surrounded by excessively flowery cottage planting on all sides - it's not for me.

Sadly that is the way. The best thing to do is plan a bed with something for all seasons. Summer perennials, spring bulbs, maybe a shrub that flowers really early like quince, something that late flowers to give you some colour into November. Mix in some evergreens, or something like a cornus with really bright stems which give some winter colour. If you can, something that winter flowers like a Christmas camellia or that has bright winter berries. That way, there's something to look at all year round.

irises are perennials, they persist over many years. But when a gardener says “perennial” they are often being very loose in their terminology and actually mean “herbaceous perennials” which are distinguished from shrubs by having no woody parts and dying down over winter.

Irises tend to be lumped in with “bulbs” along with other things that don’t have bulbs, like crocuses.

Look out for perennial ferns, ones which keep their fronds over winter. I particularly like shield ferns, Polystichum, same sort of feel as Dryopteris, but perennial.

if you have ferns, you might also like Epimedium. It has flowers, but not very conspicuous, and its asymmetric leaves complement ferns quite well.

As well as grasses, look at sedges (Carex). They are more shade tolerant, tend to be smaller, and keep their leaves very tidily in winter. Grasses can look a bit scruffy in winter, sedges have tougher leaves.

I've experimented with growing some iris sibirica in pots for the last couple of years - with no drainage holes so they're like mini bog gardens. Their foliage does die down in winter but I can move them somewhere inconspicuous and swap in a different pot.

My big agapanthus died in the cold winter the year before last and I've not yet replaced it, again that was in a big pot so it could be moved around seasonally.

If you've got a structure of the greener plants you've described then maybe having some of these 'focal point' plants you can move around might work for you? I also like moving scented plants near the door - sweet box in winter, lilies in summer, that sort of thing.

Thanks, I'm often baffled by the way words are used in gardening in English. I've mostly gardened abroad! I was indeed referring to herbaceous perennials, which are the ones which disappear over the winter, which is what the OP was worried about.

So in that sense irises should be OK with you OP?

Also look into japanese gardens, sounds like they'd be right up your street. They do love their irises too!

Yeah, "herbaceous perennials" are what are grown in "herbaceous borders". I could never understand what that was about when I was a kid.

Dryopteris are perennials too?

You might like heucheras or tirrellas - they are evergreen, often with dramatically coloured leaves. They do flower, but the flowers are quite modest. Or euphorbias?

*tiarellas, even.

Or even Heucherella, which is the hybrid between Heuchera and Tiarella