Ever-blooming perennials don’t exist, but cutting helps

Earlier this year, I overheard a conversation at a garden center in which an employee was trying to help a customer who was on a mission. She was looking for a plant that comes back year after year and blooms all summer. My first thought was, “Aren’t we all?”

Such plants simply don’t exist. It takes a lot of energy to make flowers, and perennials have to store some energy for simply living, unlike annuals, which can put all their energy into flowering like crazy and making seeds, then die having completed their mission.

That’s why it’s important to choose perennials that offer something other than just a pretty flower, such as great foliage, fall color or interesting seedheads.

But some perennials will do more work in the flowering department than others, with just a bit of help from the gardener, and now is the time to take advantage of the reblooming opportunity.

With a simple cutback, some perennials will rebloom and others will at least provide a flush of fresh foliage. But not all perennials behave this way. Typically it’s the early blooming plants that can muster enough energy to offer an additional show.

Catmint (Nepeta) is the poster child for reblooming perennials. Many are finishing up their flowering now, and when it’s over, a full cut back to the ground and a nice drink of water will be all it needs to send up new leaves and, in no time, another round of flowers.

Some varieties of catmint already have a head start on the process. ‘Junior Walker,’ purported to be a shorter version of the rather large ‘Walker’s Low,’ is a champion flopper, so it has been splayed open for a couple weeks and blooming away. But its open center has filled in with a dome of new foliage, so I’ll only need to cut back the spent stems and leave the new growth. Other varieties will just get a clean cut at the base.

Many perennial salvias will also send up new flowers. ‘Crystal Blue’ is an excellent rebloomer in my garden when cut back to decent-looking foliage. These can also be cut back to the ground, but I have better luck with reblooming when some foliage is left.

A salvia called ‘Wesuwe’ will actually rebloom through the old stems, which makes for a beautiful display of both green spend flowers and fresh deep purple new flowers.

Lady’s mantle (Alchemilla mollis) is another plant that does well with cutting back. Although it’s unlikely to do much in the way of reblooming, a cutback, either to the ground or at least to cut off spent flowers, will reinvigorate the plant and pump out fresh foliage that will look good for the rest of the season.

Lungwort (Pulmonaria) is another plant that can start looking ratty at this time of year but will get fresh foliage with a full cutback, as will many other perennials that have already hit their peak.

The garden center employee deftly delivered the bad news to the customer seeking that holy grail plant, but the blow can be softened with a little bit of maintenance to otherwise easy-going plants.