#perennial

My biggest gardening tip is that if you have $100 to spend on perennial plants you should aim closer to getting twenty little perennials than three or four big perennials. Planting four $25 plants will have a very small impact visually and you’ll be way too precious about them. Five small plants of the same species will make a bigger visual impact than one large plant of the same species. Plants are living things that you’re planting outside in the weather. You should be buying plants with the understanding that they are closer to folding chairs than Ming vases. If you spend $25 on a plant and accidentally step on it, you haven’t killed the plant but you’ve probably broken off about $12 worth of stems. If you step on a $5 plant you’ve caused like $2 worth of damage and it was probably young anyway so it might push out enough new growth to fill back in by the end of the season. You’d have to outright kill 5 of your $5 plants to equal losing one $25 plant. You will always kill some of your plants, or at least they won’t all thrive. Better to lose a $5 plant than a $25 plant.