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Alpines -  Annuals -  Bulbs and Corms -  Clematis -  Ferns
Foliage Plants -  Grasses -  Half-Hardy Perennials -  Hardy Perennials
Herbaceous Plants - Trees - Tropical & Sub-Tropical Plants

RHS Tatton Park Flower and Garden Show Exhibitors -

Plants - Hardy Perennial Plants

A perennial plant or perennial (Latin per, "through", annus, "year") is a plant that lives for more than two years. When used by gardeners or horticulturalists, this term applies specifically to perennial herbaceous plants. Scientifically, woody plants like shrubs and trees are also perennial in their habit.

Perennials, especially small flowering plants, grow and bloom over the spring and summer and then die back every autumn and winter, then return in the spring from their root-stock rather than seeding themselves as an annual plant does. These are known as herbaceous perennials. However, depending on the rigors of local climate, a plant that is a perennial in its native habitat, or in a milder garden, may be treated by a gardener as an annual and planted out every year, from seed, from cuttings or from divisions.

Hardiness of plants is a term used to describe their ability to survive adverse growing conditions. It is usually limited to discussions of climatic adversity. Thus a plant's ability to tolerate cold, heat, drought, or wind are typically considered measurements of hardiness. In temperate latitudes, the term is most often used to describe resistance to cold, or cold-hardiness and generally measured by the lowest temperatures that a plant can withstand.

The hardiness of a plant is usually divided into three categories; tender, half-hardy and hardy.

Plants vary a lot in their tolerance of growing conditions. The selection or breeding of varieties capable of withstanding particular climates forms an important part of agriculture and horticulture. Plants can adapt to some extent to changes in climate. Part of the work of nursery growers of plants consists of hardening (or hardening off) their plants, to prepare them for likely conditions in their later life.

The hardiness of plants is defined by their native extent's geographic location: longitude, latitude and elevation. These attributes are often simplified to define a hardiness zone.

Grasslands Nursery - hardy perennials and summer perennials (2008)

Hayloft Plants - hardy perennials and summer perennials (2008)

Madrona Nursery - shrubs, trees, grasses, hardy perennials andsummer perennials (2008)

Oska Copperfield Nursery - hardy perennials,summer perennials and chrysanthemums (2008)

Reginald Kaye - hardy perennials, annuals and grasses (2008)

Roots n Shoots - hardy perennials andsummer perennials (2008)

W E Th Ingwersen - alpines, rock garden plants and hardy perennials (2008) - Sadly after 81 years trading the nursery has now closed. The owner, Paul Ingwersen, has been persuaded that at 77 he should retire. As there is no-one in the family to take over the reins he had been trying, through the year, to sell the business as a going concern but without success.