I spend a lot of time counseling people on what to plant and how to lay things out, especially on weekends when I'm working at Merrifield Gardens. I have to be receptive to what they have emotional attachments to. Quite often it's peony plants passed down from grandma, or a rose from a dear aunt. It's a work around and I have no problem with it because I have my own emotional attachments, enough to fill 5 acres - I'm sure. Fortunately I can live vicariously through other peoples gardens, not actually owning all of those tree peonies (as 1 example), but tending to them.

So recently I was thinking about my own plant baggage, like what must I have in my summer garden? It struck me that so much of what I like fits into the category of temperennials. The term is not new and I assume it's from a mix of tender perennial or temporary perennial. Long and short it stands for plants that are either border line in their hardiness or just flat out tropical, perennials in their own tropical climate versus true annuals, which die after producing seed. Now we live in a pretty moderate climate, getting warmer as each year passes. We do have freezing temperatures in winter, but it's nothing like it used to be. I remember when crape myrtles would freeze to the ground in Loudoun County, sometimes even in Fairfax county.

Many of these temperennials flower from spring to fall and come back in spring. A pretty good deal when you think of hardy perennials that flower for a matter of weeks (6 is average). In the last few years I have seen dahlias return with a certain degree of regularity. I hear the same with cannas and I can definitely say that my Salvia 'Black and Blue' has come back for 3 years and is now 7 feet across. Agastache rupestris is the only variety of agastache that's returned and it's done so for 4 years. All of these flower the entire summer. I'm beginning to think that it's time to try various verbenas and go back to growing Salvia farinacea selections and snapdragons, all of which fit in the category of temperennials.

I will note that fall planting is not ideal, the winter survivors