Perennial Power: Why You Need Perennials in Your Garden

Keeping up with a garden can be a lot of work; luckily, there’s a secret weapon that will take away some of your stress. Perennials are the perfect addition to any garden, and only have to be planted once a decade!

The following is from The Resilient Farm and Homestead, Revised and Expanded Edition by Ben Falk. It has been adapted for the web.

Growing Perennials

Perennial plants are growing to become the base load engines of our regenerative land system at the Whole Systems Research Farm.

These permanent producers only need to be established rarely—once every couple of decades to every century or three, depending on species—yet they can produce annually while building soil health and requiring little or no fertility inputs.

Because perennials are established only once a decade or century compared to annuals, which must be established once every year, they are able to put more energy into larger seed yields relative to annuals, which must spend a much higher proportion of their lifetime simply becoming established.