Life’s too short for a boring garden that takes up all your time. While annuals can really add temporary beauty and excitement, choosing easy-to-grow and hardy flowers is all about the perennials.
If you’re looking for the best flowers that will come back year after year and set your garden ablaze with beauty, intrigue, and color, we’ve selected the top hardy flowers that are low-maintenance.
Why Grow Perennial Flowers?
Perennial plants give you reliable flowers that you can look forward to year after year. Because perennials return after winter, you don’t have to go through the work or expense of replanting them.
This makes them a great permanent fixture to the garden that you can add annuals around if you choose to.
Most perennials also tend to naturalize and fill in more and more over time. This gives your garden a dense foundation of well-established plants. Or you can divide your new perennials and spread their love to another spot in your garden.
Most importantly, many perennial varieties are favorites among birds, bees, butterflies, other pollinators, and other wildlife.
The Best Hardy and Carefree Perennials for Your Garden
Astilbe
- Best Characteristic: Shade-happy and showy blooms tower over the main plant
- Zones 4 - 8
- Bloom Season: Summer
When it comes to flair and fun, it’s hard to beat Astilbe, or “false goatsbeard.” It’s a showy plant with the pizazz of a Vegas performer. With an array of foliage and flower colors, this perennial is as versatile as it is easy to grow. And Astilbe’s flowers last for one to three months.
Daisies
- Best Characteristics: Classic and charming flowers and naturalize well
- Zones: 4 - 8
- Bloom Season: Summer to Fall
There are few flowers as charming and quaint as the Daisy. More wonderful than one daisy is a field filled with drifts of these easy-to-grow beauties. Beloved by winged insects, these sunny flowers invite a wide array of pollinators into the yard.
You can even divide most varieties every two to three years and replant your divisions elsewhere to multiply the fun.
Coneflowers
- Best Characteristics: Native and wildlife benefits
- Zones: 3 - 8
- Bloom Season: Summer to Fall
Coneflowers are a favorite among pollinators and birds along with holding a special place in the hearts of gardeners. These lovely plants re-emerge after winter with bright green foliage and soon produce bloom after bloom.
With large seed heads, birds also love to munch on them as fall turns into winter. You may have even heard of these native flowers referred to as “echinacea,” which is often used to make tea.
Hostas
- Best Characteristic: Shade-loving and hard to kill
- Zones: 3 - 9
- Bloom Season: Summer
Have you heard that hostas are nearly impossible to kill? It’s true! These plants are hardy and require little-to-no maintenance.
They also love the shade, which makes them an easy choice for under the dense canopy of a maple tree or as a foundation planting on the north side of your house.
These neat plants also come in shades of yellows, greens, and blue, which means you can mix and match them for a dynamic display.
Sedums
- Best Characteristics: Great groundcover and a wide variety
- Zones: 3 - 10
- Bloom Season: Summer to Fall
Sedums are the perfect choice for wide-spreading color and carefree verdant beauty. Many like Autumn Joy and Sedum Matona offer long-lasting displays of riveting flowers.
They also thrive under adverse conditions including heat, low moisture, slopes, and poor soil. In other words, they’re perfect for gardeners in difficult-to-grow climates (or those that tend to get busy or go out of town).
With so many cultivars of sedums, you’re sure to find one or a collection of several that will add color, texture, and excitement to your yard.
Daylilies
- Best Characteristics: Large, bright blooms and attract pollinators
- Zones: 4 - 9
- Bloom Season: Spring to Summer
We love those plants that look like they take a lot of work, but, in reality, require almost no upkeep. Daylilies are some of these plants. They produce a multitude of massive blooms with intricate colors or color
schemes, and they rarely require any of your gardening time.
Plus, these stunning plants divide easily and hardly bat an eye if they’re not handled gently. Their foliage is an attractive even green, and daylilies are also favorites among bees.
Coral Bells
- Best Characteristics: Ravishing foliage and shade tolerant
- Zones: 4 - 9
- Bloom Season: Spring to Summer
Coral Bells (or heuchera) produce the most petite and adorable blooms that look fit for a fairy garden. But most people don’t grow these hardy plants for their flowers. These plants offer excellent texture and come in some of the richest and most unique foliage colors.
They make adding contrast to shady spots of the garden easy, and you don’t have to do much other than giving them room to grow to keep them thriving. Looking for a bright or original variety? You cannot go wrong with Lemon Love, Primo Black Pearl, or Berry Smoothie.
Rose of Sharon
- Best Characteristics: Floriferous shrub and showy flowers
- Zones: 5 - 8
- Blooms Season: Summer
If you really want to please your local bees and treat yourself to a deciduous screen, the Rose of Sharon should be top on your list. This shrub can be pruned to fit your space and will produce large flowers every summer.
With so many color choices, you can even create a pattern of eye-popping petals in shades that can be quite rare.
Coreopsis
- Best Characteristics: Long blooms season and native
- Zones: 4 -9
- Bloom Season: Spring into Late Summer or Fall
Coreopsis are some of the carefree plants you can grow in your garden. These charismatic plants offer months of lovely, incised blooms, and a snack for your pollinators and birds.
They grow in tidy mounds and can be used in many different spots for full effect. Their dainty foliage creates a spritely vision on a windy spring day, and they rarely need any maintenance.
Hardy perennials offer everlasting & easy garden interest!
Whether you’re looking for a great garden investment or a way to keep your yard in-bloom all year long, perennials are the way to grow. Mix and match based on your garden’s conditions and bloom time for blooms in every corner of the yard. You can even grow them in your containers.
Want to learn more about perennial plants that pollinators cannot resist? Check out this blog.
