Garden Tips Newsletter
Selecting and Dividing
Perennials
February 16, 2009
It is not too early to divide those perennials that bloom during the second half of the summer. The list below will get you started. Blanketflowers, chrysanthemum, Japanese anemone, asters, boltonia, goldenrods, obedient plant, stokesia, and yarrow can all be dug and divided now. Daylilies, hosta and garden phlox can also be divided now.
Selecting great performing perennials for Mississippi gardens can be a daunting task when you enter the garden center this spring and are faced with so many choices. Based on observance and recommendations of Master Gardeners statewide you can’t go wrong choosing a cultivar of the following genera: hosta, hemerocallis (daylily), achillea (yarrow), salvia (Mexican Bush sage, Blood or Texas sage, Indigo spires, Mealycup sage,), heuchera (coralbells), verbena (all perennial types except V. bonariensis, which can be invasive) and stokesia.
Lelia Scott Kelly, Ph.D., writes Garden Tips weekly and is a Horticulture Specialist with the Mississippi State University Extension Service. Her office is in the North Mississippi Research & Extension Center, Verona.