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Easy perennials from seed

Grow unusual varieties you won’t find as garden centre plants

Many gardeners sow annuals or biennials but there are some easy perennials from seed we can all grow to save money and widen the choices of varieties available.

There’s a myth that perennials are hard to grow, yet most need very little heat, or skill, to germinate. You can save a small fortune and grow much rarer plants.

  • Easy perennials from seed
  • Easy perennials from seed
  • Easy perennials from seed
  • Easy perennials from seed
  • Easy perennials from seed

The majority of my seed-sown perennials came from Plant World Seeds‘ Coloured Foliage Collection, good value at £18.95. The contents vary from season to season but my collection contained:

  • Geranium pratense Purple Haze
  • Haloragis Wellington Bronze
  • Heuchera Metallica
  • Agastache Golden Jubilee
  • Lavatera arborea variegata
  • Nicandra Splash of Cream
  • Penstemon Husker Red
  • Phormium Mixed
  • Plantago major rubrifolia.

Varieties that succeeded for me

I didn’t grow them all, but here are the ones that I did:

  • Geranium pratense Purple Haze: 60-75cm. Foliage with a bronze-purple hue. It’s deepest in colour during spring, gradually changing to deep green with purple edging. Violet-mauve blooms.
  • Heuchera Metallica: 40cm. Marbled and veined leaves in mahogany, bronze, aluminium, and silver, best on young spring foliage. Flower sprays in pink and white.
  • Lavatera arborea variegata: 1.2m. This variegated tree mallow has irregular splotches of cream on big, downy leaves. Purple flowers smother the plant in early summer. Some doubt over hardiness, it only survived one winter here.
  • Penstemon Husker Red: 60-90cm. Beetroot-coloured stems and foliage. Rosy-lipped, palest pastel pink tubular flowers.
  • Plantago major rubrifolia: 40cm. A deep purple form of the giant plantain, with large, shiny purple leaves producing an impressive rosette. Long thin poker-like seed heads. Great ground cover and will stand some shade.
  • Agastache Golden Jubilee: 50cm. This hyssop is exceptional for its yellow-chartreuse, mint-scented foliage. Blue-lavender bottle-brush flowers throughout the summer. Best if given a bit of shade to protect the foliage colour.
  • Mixed Euphorbias
  • Euphorbia with Bergenia Admiral
  • Euphorbia
  • Euphorbia

Other mixes

These three were separate packets from Plant World Seeds.

  • Hardy Geranium Mixed: 30-90cm. Contains varieties with too few seeds to list on their own and a few rarities.
  • Euphorbia Mixed: 45cm-1.2m. Hardy perennial Euphorbias, including some unnamed rarities. My large Euphorbia mellifera, or honey spurge, came from this mix.
  • Penstemon lyallii: 45-60cm. From Idaho/Montana. A compact overwintering rosette sprouts forth many branching stems heavily laden with large, slightly squashed, pink-lavender flowers.
  • Foxglove Summer King
  • Foxgloves Summer King and Candy Mountain, Campanula lactifolia and Aquilegia Green Apples
  • Foxgloves Summer King and Candy Mountain

Named foxgloves and Aquilegias from seed

Most named foxgloves (more on them here) and Aquilegias are as easy to grow from seed as their wild counterparts. I’ve grown these with no problem:

  • Foxglove Candy Mountain: 90-140cm. The first upward-facing foxglove from seed with rose pink blooms and freckled throats, Thompson & Morgan.
  • Foxglove Summer King: 60-90cm. The flowers are very large, strawberry-rose in colour with darker markings on the inside. Usually, lives 2 to 4 years. A naturally occurring cross between the yellow flowering Digitalis grandiflora and Digitalis purpurea, Thompson & Morgan.
  • Aquilegia Green Apples: 30cm. Clematis-like flower formation. The buds open in a lime-green shade, fading to apple-green before ageing to cream, Thompson & Morgan.

Potted guide: sowing perennials

Potted guide

Plant World Seeds’ sowing advice on perennials:

  • Sow seeds on to a good soil-based compost and cover with fine grit or compost to approximately their own depth.
  • They can be sown at any time, although germination can be quicker if kept at 15=20C. We sow most seeds in an unheated greenhouse and wait for natural germination. Many seeds wait for spring before emerging regardless of when they are sown.
  • Spring sowing will obviously give them a full season of growth.

  • Dianthus deltoides
  • Cardoons

Easy perennials from seed with different needs

Here’s two which require different treatments:

  • Dianthus deltoides Alba (white maiden pink): 15cm. Forms a dark green mat and stands some shade, with white, starry flowers. It needs a cold spell in wet compost to break dormancy. Sow in winter or early spring. Cover seeds very thinly with sand or fine grit. If the seeds do not come up within six-12 weeks, the seed tray can be put in a fridge for about four weeks. They may still take many months to appear, but mine did eventually.
  • Cynara cardunculus (cardoon): 1.5m+. A relative of the globe artichoke, with edible stems when cooked. Huge divided silver leaves and big thistle-like ‘flowers’. mine came from a 49p packet. Sow from January individually in 7cm pots for planting outdoors after the last frost. Place in a propagator at between 21-24C. Grow on in cooler conditions under glass when germinated. Move into a cold frame (without heat) for six-eight weeks before planting out. Plants grow slowly at first and should be transplanted into a larger container before moving to their permanent positions.

Easy perennials from seed updated 2022