hi and welcome back to garden ninja today's video guide is all about
perennials these are the plants that come back year after year in your garden now
I had a few questions of some people on Twitter that said when do I prune these
and what do we do with them today's guys going to show you exactly
what to do even if you don't want you've got in your garden so come on let's go!
Now whilst there were literally thousands of different perennials this
guide is gonna simplify it for you so you don't even need to know the name of the
plant you're dealing with so I split the herbaceous perennial pruning into three
main groups the first group probably the easiest these are the ground cover
herbaceous plants and these pretty much do the job for you they will die back in
the winter leaving fairly any trace and you
probably don't have to do much to the second group what I call the Brown and
crispies so things like your grasses you salvias anything that puts on loads of
height like Penstemons and then they crisp up over the winter now a lot of
people tend to cut them back in autumn when they finish flowering
please don't do that I tend to go for the approach leaves and throughout the
winter it's not only do they give amazing structure during the barren
months they also feed wildlife.
The third and final group are your evergreen herbaceous perennials which
again need very little attention other than cutting out some of the dead and
dying matter so come on let me show you how to deal with the brown and crispy
green so you don't need a few key bits of equipment firstly some nice
lightweight gloves to protect your precious fingers secondly a nice pair of
clean sharp secateurs to remove all that dead material and then thirdly one
of these attractive sexy buckets any will do which is to put all the dead
matter in it really couldn't be any simpler with your sharp secateurs we
can take the plant back to the base so this example here is a nepeta
see there's a little tiny bit of new growth here you want to take it all the
way back to the base it's the same here with these Verbena bonariensis
they've given a great show this year the time is well and truly off so if left
near the winter now I'm just going to nip the back
you
now this Galium here's a really good example of an evergreen ground cover
perennial mouthful you don't need to do anything to evergreen perennials like so
is it the leaves are a little bit tatty but in the men it looks fine so leave it
So this Alchemilla mollis here is a prime example
of a herbaceous perennial usually goes back to the ground still got a few leaves here so it's
looking a bit battered so what I'm going to do me now any frost in February and
March will finish them off so I'm just going to nip it back and you'll feel
there's kind of quite a lot of woody growth down there so that's the crown
and that's going to be absolutely fine
So there we have it my super easy guide as to when and how to prune your
perennials but regardless of whether you know what they are if you like this
video why not subscribe to our youtube channel or they'll loads more Garden design
hints tips and hacks to help you the gardener get the most out of your garden
and if you don't know what perennial you're dealing with why not drop a
comment below describing it do my best to help you
either name it and then tell you when to prune it! I've been Garden Ninja,
Happy Gardening