10 of the Best Perennial Flowers to Plant in Central Indiana
As badly as you might want it to feel like a tropical paradise in your backyard, your plants reveal the truth. Plant as many palm trees as you want. They’re just not going to make it here in central Indiana.
Before you go sticking whatever you feel like in the ground, cross-reference your plants with the USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map. Central Indiana is in zone 5b/6a, determined by the average annual extreme minimum temperature, which for us is between -15 degrees and -5 degrees Fahrenheit.
CHOOSE HOOSIER FLOWERS
While the zone map helps with all kinds of plants, we’re focusing on your flower beds in this article. Below are 10 popular flowers that do well in our zone, and should pop back up next spring.
- Coneflower. The purple varieties are especially popular, but these thin-petaled flowers with large, pollinator-attracting stigma come in green, orange, pink, red, white and yellow.
- Coral Bells. A.k.a. heuchera, these almost look like tiny pink evergreen trees and do well in partly shaded beds.
- Daisy. The common white daisy is hearty enough to withstand Indiana winters, so hearty you’ll need to keep it away from your lawn lest it overtake the yard.
- Daylily. These six-petaled beauties tend to come in warm colors, yellow, red or orange, and tend to require very little care to thrive.
- Foxglove. Nobody knows for sure where foxgloves got their name, but the small, bowing lavender-colored teacups would look awfully cute on a fox’s paws.
- Goat’s Beard. These wispy, delicate white flowers make an excellent complement to the more boldly-colored flowers above.
- Hosta. Known more as a hearty, gap-filling shrub, the small white hosta flower protruding upward from the center of the plant makes a nice addition to your perennial collection.
- Ice Plant. The purple variety featuring thin, stiff petals with a splash of white protruding from golden eyes spread out like a lovely carpet at a height of about two inches.
- Autumn Joy. Long, durable stems thrust bursts of tiny petals like dense pink clouds up a couple of feet, forming a canopy over those little ice plants down below.
- Violet. Some of the most stunning flowers on your property might well be violets, some varieties of which have quite intricate patterns, purples tinged with white and a yellow eye.
SEE ANYTHING YOU LIKE?
A carefully-planned flower garden will not only look like an organized, beautiful collection of flowers in all shapes, heights and colors, it will also thrive this year and return next.
Bored with the same blooms year after year? In our next article we will list some lovely annuals that do well in our zone. Sometimes it’s fun to switch things up a bit.
In the meantime, you know where to get your burning floral questions answered. We’re here to help.
Clean Cut Lawn & Landscape
7415 W Jackson St
Muncie, IN 47304-9759
(765) 759-8575
info@cleancutlandscape.net