Creating Beautiful Sun Perennial Gardens

Whether your landscape has just a few sunny spots you’d like to enhance with colorful flowers or it’s an open vista of glaring sun that could use some shade, it’s easy to create a diverse, rich landscape with the enormous list of perennials for sun. Unlike annuals, perennials will come back year after year with the proper care, so they offer a great value. Be sure to check the planting instructions when choosing your sun perennials- a preference for full sun does not always indicate a preference for dry soil or arid conditions. Also note the hardiness zones and care instructions to see if your perennials need any extra attention, like mulching, for successful overwintering. The list of perennials for sun includes a wide variety of plants that will enjoy the hotter, drier areas of your yard and fill them with glorious colors and scents.

Vivid, colorful sunny landscaping is effortless with the immense array of sun-loving perennial flowers available. Among the top perennials for sun, these flowering plants offer bright, vibrant blossoms and love full sunlight. If you’d like to create dramatic landscapes by adding layers of height, consider starting with tall sun perennials. Coneflowers, delphinium, liatris and hollyhocks are all excellent candidates for creating tall backdrops in high sunlight areas. Mid-sized sun-worshippers such as  Carnations, daisies, coreopsis and peonies provide fullness and abundant blossoms, perfect for filling in beds and borders. Finish the look with low-growing plants like colorful carpet phlox and  hardy geraniums.

Sun-loving perennials are some of the brightest flowers in the garden, and their color and size make them popular in cut arrangements. For a magnificent cutting garden, the best perennials for sun include beauties like daylilies, iris, columbine, and lines, among others. Late-summer and autumn gardens that receive full sun can incorporate gorgeous perennials like asters, mums, helenium and Russian sage.

If your landscape is completely open to the sun, consider adding shade with trees, shrubs bushes and hedge plants. There’s a long list of perennials for sun that can add shade to your landscape, including several types of drought tolerant trees such as red maple and crape myrtle. Among flowering shrubs, top perennials for sun include butterfly bush, hydrangea and lilac, which fill sunny spaces quickly and provide abundant blooms. Plant them close together for privacy screens and hedges. Many beautiful and fragrant rose varieties are also sun-loving. In fact, full sun even enhances the coloration of some types. Hibiscus bushes thrive in full sun and make colorful, tropical garden centerpieces.

You can also add vertical interest to a sunny garden or landscape with gorgeous flowering vine plants. Vining sun perennials include selections like brilliant orange trumpet vines, sweetly scented honeysuckles and jasmines, intricate passionflowers and colorful clematis. Vining plants offer beauty and versatility. Most can be used as a ground cover or trained to climb trellises and other supports. Flowering vines are a great way to disguise unattractive fences or add interest to a boring structure, and they attract butterflies and birds to the yard with their lovely flowers and fragrances. Most flowering vine plants do best when given vertical support, although some also make an excellent ground cover.

In many environments, sun-loving perennials are the best choice for ground covers. Xeriscaping, the practice of landscaping in ways that reduce or eliminate the need for excess water, is a good gardening technique for areas with limited water resources. Sun-loving, drought resistant perennials are perfectly suited to xeriscaping and make it easy to have a lush, gorgeous landscape even in dry climates. Sedums, succulents, ornamental grasses, and a wide variety of drought resistant flowers all make excellent ground covers and can thrive in dry soil areas. Sedums and succulents like hens and chicks, creeping sedums, ice flowers, aloes and agave enjoy full sun and arid environments. Depending on the variety, they are well-suited to filling in rock walls, edging walkways, or filling in empty areas.

Many varieties of ornamental grasses are not only sun-loving but also drought resistant. Purple Love grass, Cherry Sparkler, Blue Festuca, Pampas and Zebra grasses all add brightly colored, unique foliage to your landscape while requiring minimal water. Ornamental grasses are available in a wide array of sizes, making them suitable for applications ranging from low ground covers to tall privacy hedges.

Fragrant, lemony bee balm and Magic Carpet thyme make beautiful and deliciously scented ground covers and can handle being walked on, making them perfect for paths. Low-growing flowering ground covers like gorgeous Butterfly Kisses mini coneflowers, white Snow-in-Summer, phlox and dainty bellflowers are perfect for carpeting large areas in bountiful blooms. Taller ground covers like lavender and salvia fill the space with their spikes of fragrant flowers. It’s easy to fill in the sunny areas of your landscape. With the huge selection of top perennials for sun, you will easily be able to find the colors, sizes and varieties of sun-loving plants you need to make your garden really pop.

Have another question? Return to the Customer Service Help page or send an e-mail directly to Customer Service