Plants You Sit Back and Watch Grow

Perennials..... ahhh.... flowers for the lazy gardener (me).

God was really thinking when He invented perennials. You plant these and then for the rest of your life you just sit back in your lawn chair with your glass of lemonade and watch them grow.

Well, mostly.

Here is a list of my favorite perennials, flowers/plants/bushes which come up all by themselves year after year.... plants which love you better if you neglect them and ones which re-seed themselves so wildly, that your time is spent just digging them up and rearranging them, rather like you'd rearrange the furniture inside your house.

Ones Which Spread (And Don't Need Much Water or Care):

Forget-me-nots
Daffodils
Purple basil
Bachelor buttons
Grape hyacinth
Columbine
Shasta daisies
Lily of the Valley
Daylilies
Lavender
Peonies (well, they kinda spread)
Black-eyed Susans
Oregano
Lemon balm and mint (though if you're smart, you'll plant these in containers because they're invasive).
Cosmos and marigolds (sometimes, under the right conditions, these will re-seed themselves)

Ones Which Don't Spread:

Purple balloon flower (for 6 years mine has come back even though I do absolutely nothing to it)
Hardy asters


Ones Which Spread, But Prefer More Water:

Strawberries
Raspberries
Sunflowers
Ivy


Flowering Bushes:

Roses (tho' most prefer water, but I do have one old short-stemmed variety which I totally neglect, but has given me red roses for 14 summers).
Lilacs
Rhododendrons


Of course, there are many others, and in some cases, not all of these might grow in all areas (zones). I am so not a master gardener. But I just wanted to share, from experience, my favorites for those of you who may be wanting to grow an easy garden. Many of these grew for my black thumb way out West, thousands of miles away from where this Eastern girl now lives.

I am currently growing everything listed above in my tiny yard. Year after year they all return every Spring, just like dear old friends who, as a group, surprise me in my own backyard with perfumed dresses and colorful smiles.


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Any other oh-so-easy plants you'd like to add to my list?