Enjoy the blooms in your garden for longer than a few weeks. These perennials are the best bang for your buck, giving you long-lasting, blooming flowers for years to come.
1. Garden Phlox
Phlox are perennial favorite among wildflowers. They are compact, low-maintenance, and long-blooming. They are known for their spicy vanilla-clove fragrance and purple-pink flowers that bloom in summer. Phlox are dense and clump-forming with attractive, strong yellowish-green foliage. At full bloom, they can reach up to 16 inches tall and 18 inches wide. They establish quickly with full sun and well-draining soils.
2. Blanket Flower
The blanket flower has no special needs when it comes to watering. Anyone can make it bloom prolifically, without a ‘green thumb.’ All it really needs is a sunny spot and occasional watering spells. It blooms all summer around, and even in the fall. It is feasible to grow this plant in both cold and warm tropical climates (USDA Zones 3-10).
3. Yarrow
They can add color and variety to your summer garden with their long blooming season. The fern-like leaves also are an asset, not to mention the medicinal value of the herb.
Grow yarrow in full sun, but make sure that it stays within limits. The flat-topped flower heads look good in flower arrangements, so keep cutting them off to reduce self-seeding.
4. Lavender
Lavender-scented linens, sachets, and potpourris provide a nice touch in a home and are ridiculously easy to acquire. But even people with no interest in such domesticity grow lavender plants, since they bring a touch of class to the landscape, too. English lavender (Lavandula angustifolia) blooms from June through August on plants that grow 2 to 3 feet in height.
5. Coneflower
Flowering all through summer and into fall, its flowers can be harvested for making an herbal tea. In fact, all parts of the plant have medicinal properties.
6. Coreopsis
Coreopsis flowers throughout the summer and is a perennial plant that blooms every year. Growing in full sun, coreopsis plants have a bushy growth habit and produce a horde of dazzling yellow flowers.
7. Butterfly Bush
Butterfly bush is a drought tolerant deciduous shrub that doesn’t require much ongoing maintenance. It has long spiky flower heads that can be purple, pink, orange or white.
Butterfly bush can become invasive so it’s a good idea to remove the dead flower heads to stop the seeds spreading.
8. Black-Eyed Susan
Black-eyed Susan produces stunning golden yellow daisy-like flowers throughout the summer months and well into the fall. Spectacular flowers grow on the end of long stems, making the plant excellent for creating a colorful accent. The flowers are prolific bloomers that don’t stop until the frost arrives. These sun-loving plants are grown as tender perennials or annuals.
9. Stonecrop (Sedum)
Stonecrop flowers are some of the easiest summer-blooming plants to grow in your garden if you want months of pretty flowers. These low-growing flowering perennials will bloom for six months or more.
10. Catmint
Catmint is a small shrubby perennial that blooms from spring through summer and into the fall. The flowering plant produces dainty blue flowers that give off a heavenly fragrance. These flower spikes stand erect above silver-gray foliage that combines to make catmint an excellent border, container, or ground cover plant.
11. Red Hot Poker
Red Hot Poker, also known as Torch Lily, is a beautiful bright perennial that is low maintenance and doesn’t require frequent watering.
They grow best in full sun and need plenty of space to spread out in the garden.