One day in March, a few years ago, I stopped at my local garden centre to take a breather from a long car journey to top up my blood-caffeine levels. I sat outside the coffee shop and watched a pair of elderly women choosing from the effusive pick and mix of spring planting. They were debating over a choice between bedding plants or, my favourite things ever, the hardy perennials.
In early March, perennials are pretty much all foliage: greens, greys, smooth leaved or furry, but essentially, flowerless. They look relatively dull, compared to big, blousy hyacinths, pink and red tulips, or the enthusiastic open faces of multicoloured pansies and primulas. I think that is why I love them, actually. I love the way that in mid-spring the first signs of foliage squeeze their way through the earth. I love spotting the first tight curls of alchemilla mollis, tiny grey-green roundels, hairy and ready to catch the first dew drops of the day. I get very excited when I see a green fistful of hollyhock buds and leaf tips pushing past the stony detritus of my poorly tended borders. And I do just adore wandering around garden centres and nurseries, dreamily fantasising about new lupins, potentilla and geraniums to tuck into any available spaces in the flower-beds.
But what I really love about the hardy perennial is that they do what they say on the can, so to speak. Hardy enough to flower all spring and summer, yet die back in the winter, and survive snow and frost and the kind of general neglect they can expect in my garden. And being perennial, they come back every year. Pretty much. So every time you add to your collection, you know that it’s not a one off pleasure, but something that is going to keep turning up every flipping spring to wave it’s foliage at you and generally be gorgeous for a couple of months. Just brilliant!
It struck me that my favourite kind of people are hardy perennials too. None of your temporary bedding plant buddies, in it for the short-haul, sunny days and brief warm spells. Nope. They won’t survive a drought or a frost, fun though they are for a season. They’ll probably need replacing next summer. Even your winter pansies have a finite life-span, pretty though they are, and useful for filling spaces. No, for me, it’s the hardy perennials who, though they may recede and retreat to pause and quietly restock, come back each time a little stronger and more vigorous, who I adore. In the winter, while those beautiful, determined stems are fermenting their spring growth, I am looking forward to their emergence. At the start of each growing season, I greet my hardy perennials much as I would greet a long lost, deeply missed friend – with great warmth following their absence, with relief that they are healthy and well, and with joy that despite my neglect and lack of care, they have chosen to come back.
Friendships move in and out, grow, die, stagnate. New ones can germinate quickly, old ones slowly mulch down under new plantings. But those hardy perennials that come back year on year and fill the place with colour and joy are the treasure in my garden and in my heart. You can plant new ones, you can add to the colour scheme, sprinkle the odd seed here and there, but you know what? Just be a hardy perennial and I’ll love you forever.
Boringly Enough 