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| Photo Credit: Joe Seals |
| Without a cold winter, hardy perennials in California and similar regions often suffer in dry summers. Give your garden a boost by using traditional perennials as annuals instead. |
Contrary to popular belief, we can’t grow everything in California. Or at least not everything in all of California. And not everything all the time and in the same way that it’s grown elsewhere in the country. But we can get quite nice rewards from some plants that aren’t completely adapted here by using them in a different way than their familiar distinction. (Garden lovers living in most southern states, including Florida, the coasts of the Gulf States and the desert areas of Arizona: Take note as well!)br>
I like the plants known as “hardy perennials,” for instance. (Familiar examples include columbines and delphiniums.) Yet true “hardiness” – a plant’s tolerance of serious winter cold – is not an issue for those of us in California or for those in warm-climate areas. We just don’t need plants that tolerate below-zero temperatures. Our real dilemma is that true hardy plants actually need that cold winter slap in the face to put them into a resting stage. It’s this “hibernation” phase that not only helps these plants through the coldest winters, it persuades them to push out an abundance of new growth for the coming spring and summer. Without a cold winter, hardy perennials simply limp into the coming year rather than burst into it, and they become even limper over the following years. Often such perennials suffer in California’s dry summers, making them look as trashy as they would look if they were going into Eastern winters.
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