Perennials

Home Study Perennial Plant Course

Perennials cover a wide range of plants including both ornamental and useful plants. There are perennial plants for all situations.

• Learn to Identify and Grow over 100 different Perennials
• Persue a passion, grow your plant knowledge, work with perennials
• A course for the amateur enthusiast, or the professional nurseryman, landscaper, gardener or plantsman

Lesson Structure

There are 8 lessons in this course:

1. Introduction
   • Review of the system of plant identification
   • Physiology
   • Information sources
2. Culture
   • Planting
   • Staking
   • Mulching
   • Watering
   • Feeding
   • Pruning, etc.
3. Propagation and Hybridization
4. Review of Major Types of Perennials
5. Pests & Disease
6. Irrigation & Hydroponic Culture Techniques
7. Landscaping with Perennials
8. Further Uses

Each lesson culminates in an assignment which is submitted to the school, marked by the school's tutors and returned to you with any relevant suggestions, comments, and if necessary, extra reading.

Aims

• Describe the identification of Perennial Plants
• Determine sources of further information for identifying and growing different varieties of perennials.
• Discuss a variety of cultural techniques used to improve success in growing of different perennial plants
• Determine the propagation of different perennial plants.
• Discuss the horticulture of a range of commonly grown perennial genera.
• Discuss the management of pests and diseases occurring on a range of perennial plants.
• Manage irrigation and drainage to ensure optimum water levels are maintained for healthy growth in perennials.
• Determine appropriate use of perennials in a range of horticultural situations.
• Describe a variety of uses for perennials.

Perennials are a diverse group of plants providing the gardener with a wide range of plant material suited to an equally wide range of climate and soil conditions. Whilst trees and shrubs provide the backbone of the garden, perennials, with such diversity of structure, flowers and leaf shapes, fill in the spaces to provide (if chosen carefully) year round colour and interest.

Most perennials are very beautiful but at the same time quite tough – this is a bonus for people living in areas with low rainfall or water restrictions. The diversity of perennials means that you can have a beautiful garden, full of perennial plants, any where in the world. There are perennials suited to a Mediterranean climate, wet climates, dry climates, tropical regions and anywhere in between.

Perennials have played an important part in garden design over the centuries; they have been used in the herbaceous borders of grand European gardens as well as in the humble cottage garden. Today perennials are used in similar (if not so labour intensive) ways.

Perennials can be used as fillers for garden beds (such as rose gardens); to line a driveway; to edge walls and ponds; to tumble down embankments or retaining walls; in rock gardens; gravel gardens, in a herbaceous border; in woodland gardens; as ground cover plants and in wild flower meadows.

They can also be used as accent plants to create impact, diversity and movement in the garden, grasses and grass-like plants are an obvious choice. (Grasses are covered in more detail later this lesson).