Staking gives your garden good looks and enhances plant health.
The keys to aperennial garden’sbeauty are primarily unseen.
Reasons for Staking Plants
Perennials lean, topple, and flop for many reasons.
Sun-loving perennials in part shade tend to stretch for the sun, which frequently requires that you stake plants.
Other perennials are prone to flopping because of large flower heads or lanky stems.
Guide to Staking Plants
Staking plants falls into two categories: preventive and remedial.
Preventive staking involves thoughtful planning and action before stems collapse.
It’s what you do for known floppers in your garden, such as peonies and meadow rue.
Choose from a variety of stakes to support perennials.
Select plastic-coated wire cages,tomato cages, or grids for grow-through supports.
For preventively staking plants, insert supports in spring when plants emerge from the soil.
This is vitally important for grow-through andgrid stakes.
That’s easy to judge with remedial staking.
With preventive staking, choose supports based on final plant height.
Approach your staking ideas with a trial-and-error approach.
If something doesn’t work for oneperennial, it might for another.
You’ll find the best solution as you continue crafting.
Tomato Cages
Versatile and inexpensive, tomato cages can fill many roles in the perennial garden.
Use bolt cutters to transform cages into cut-to-size supports.
Snip tomato cage legs just above hoops to form stakes of varying heights.
Staking plants in early spring before they need them is recommended.
Drive the stakes deep into the soil to anchor them.
Add string layers throughout the growing season as stems continue to soar skyward.
Keep the string tight enough to support leaning stems but loose enough to prevent a trussed-up look.
At the end of the growing season, remove this support when you clean up the garden.
Wooden andbamboostakes slowly rot over time, so it’s wise to remove them from the soil over winter.
Dipping the ends of wooden supports in wax can help slow the deterioration process.
Ways to Support Plants
There are as many ways to support plants as there are creative gardeners.
Use with clump-forming perennials, such as peony, garden phlox,sea holly, and monkshood.
Linking
Upright pieces with arms that link and form joints it’s possible for you to bend.
Examples are centranthus,crocosmia, pincushion flower, ladybells, and Shasta daisy.
Use with sprawling perennials such as aster,blackberry lily,obedient plant, and yarrow.
Use with all perennials.
Use with tall perennials topped with heavy flower spikes, such asdelphinium, foxglove, hollyhock, and lily.
Use with clump-forming perennials, such as helenium,salvia, and showy sedum.
Twig Stake
Insert sturdy, branched twigs into soil near floppy plants for support.
Use with clump-forming perennials, such asfalse sunflower, meadow sage, and spotted bellflower.
