- EP293 Perennial Grow Along September 2025. What You Will Need To Grow Your Own Perennial Border. Seed to Border: The Perennial Grow Along Project

Imagine transforming your garden with a beautiful perennial border—all grown from seed at a fraction of the cost of buying established plants. This episode kicks off our exciting Perennial Grow Along project, guiding you through the entire journey from seed to spectacular flowering plants.

Growing perennials from seed isn't just economical; it fills gardeners with immense pride. There's something truly special about nurturing a tiny seed into a magnificent flowering plant that will grace your garden for years to come. Whether you're planning to expand your borders, add color to new areas, or simply experience the joy of growing, this project offers something for everyone.

We break down exactly what you'll need to get started: perennial seeds of your choice, suitable growing media, seed trays (or improvised containers), and labels. You'll learn about selecting the right varieties for your conditions, including both cultivated flowers and native wildflowers. Featured plants include English lavender, Verbena bonariensis, Salvia 'Blue Queen', Rudbeckia, Lupins, and more—each offering unique colors and characteristics for your garden.

The grow along follows a simple structure. Starting with a comprehensive sowing demonstration on YouTube (September 15th), we'll progress through germination, pricking out seedlings, growing on through winter, and finally planting out next summer. Live Q&A sessions will address your specific challenges, ensuring everyone succeeds regardless of experience level.

Don't miss this opportunity to create something beautiful and lasting for your garden while developing valuable skills. Subscribe to Master My Garden on YouTube to catch all the videos, and send your questions to info@mastermygarden.com for our live sessions. Join us as we grow together and transform our gardens one seed at a time!

The perennial seed I will grow in this challenge are:

• Achillea millefolium 'F2 Summer Berries' 
• Rudbeckia fulgida var. sullivantii 'Goldsturm' 
• Salvia x superba 'Blue Queen' 
• Lupinus x russellii ‘The Pages’  
• Verbena bonariensis  
• Aquilegia vulgaris var. stellata 'Nora Barlow' 
• Gaura lindheimeri ‘Emmeline Pink Bouquet' 
• Erigeron karvinskianus 'Profusion' 
• Echinacea hybrida 'Paradiso Tall Mix' 
• Lavandula angustifolia 'Lavender Vera'
• Native Oc Eye Daisy
• Native St.John's Worth
• Native Marjoram
• Native Birds Foot Trefoil
• Native Greater Knapweed
• Native Campion

Subscribe to Master My Garden on YouTube for updates 

https://www.youtube.com/@mastermygarden9542/featured

Chapters

• 0:12 Welcome to the Perennial Grow Along
• 4:03 Why Grow Perennials from Seed
• 9:04 How the Grow Along Works
• 14:46 Materials You'll Need
• 16:41 Choosing Perennial Seeds
• 21:20 Native Plants and Wildflowers
• 24:41 Next Steps and Schedule

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:12

How's it going, everybody, and welcome to episode 292 of Mastering my Garden Podcast. Now, this week's episode, I'm running through what we're going to be doing and the layout of this grow along. So the perennial grow along, which I think is going to be very exciting, and there's some listeners who are already messaging to say they're looking forward to it. Um, so, basically, what is it? It's a grow along where I'll show you how to grow essentially perennial plants from seed and and you know I mentioned last week that there'd be a live element to it and I will explain that in a minute. But I suppose the first thing I want to kind of look at is why we'll do this, and you know it's a topic we've covered at this time of year on a couple of occasions. But I suppose this grow along will give you kind of accountability or give you something to work towards, and then, hopefully, we can share in one another success. I suppose the full fruits of that won't be seen until maybe, you know, august, september of next year, but we can sort of take you through all the stages and then do a live or two that will answer the questions and see how we go. Got a message from a listener last week who's already doing this, who's already sown their seed and it's germinating and is looking what to do for the next stage, you know, to transplant on these little seedlings. So you know there'll be lots of questions and tips as to how you can basically create your own plants to do a border, to create a perennial border, from a few packets of seed, and it's a really, really brilliant and simple thing to do.

Speaker 1: 2:01

As we heard last week listeners who have done it before or grown before from seed. It gives them an enormous sense of pride. You know the plants that they've grown, to see them come into full flower and to know that they've nurtured that from a tiny little seed all the way through to a flowering plant that looks brilliant in the garden. That the flowers can be brought, you know, inside for bouquets is, yeah, it's a great thing, great feeling, and it does fill us with pride. So that's kind of the reason for it. You know it gives you that pride. It's obviously in terms of value for money. If you have a big space to do, it's phenomenally good value for money. It just takes a small bit of effort, not a huge amount, and it gives you the experience of sowing seeds and getting confident with that and knowing that you know that you can do it, so that you can continue to sow from seed, so that you continue to grow various things over the coming years. The fact that you have, you know, the live element, the ability to ask questions, to tell us you know what's happening in your scenario specifically, that's, you know, going to give you the confidence to be able to do this. It's not very hard, as you'll see, but to have that backup and to know that you know when something is maybe going a little bit wrong or you think something's going a little bit wrong, that you're able to get the answer to how to solve it, and it's brilliant. If you are planning for next year, planning, you know, an expansion of areas of the garden or planning on adding borders, or you know extending anything or adding colour, you know it's brilliant. It's a brilliant brilliant of of getting plants, for you know, very little cost input and one of the listeners, maria, who messaged last week, that's her idea. So she's growing these seeds in a windowsill at the moment. They're doing really well, a good variety of perennials and the overall aim of that is to do a big expansion of borders in the garden, and to be doing that from our own seed, obviously, you know, from a cost input point of view, especially when you're doing a big expansion, makes perfect sense. So they're all the reasons why we're doing it. How, how we're going to do it is is very, very simple. So this is the.

Speaker 1: 4:21

This episode is sort of the, just the launch of it. This is telling you you know what's needed, what we're going to do over the weekend I will sow all my seed and record it on a video. I was going to try and go live from the polytunnel, I think wi-fi wise. It just wouldn't make sense, it'd be too glitchy. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to record it and I'm going to sow my seeds on the weekend. Show you exactly how I do it all the little elements, the, the sowing, the watering, all of those little bits. Then I put that video.

Speaker 1: 4:55

That'll go live on youtube on monday, so next monday, the 15th. So if anyone is not subscribed to Master my Garden on YouTube, then there's not a lot of videos up there, except for the podcast itself and some other small videos. But I'm going to go live there. So subscribe to Master my Garden on YouTube On Monday. That video will go live. You'll be able to watch those. Those videos see exactly how you can sow the seed, what you need to do next, watering and all that sort of stuff.

Speaker 1: 5:30

Then on the following monday we'll go live with you know questions. So there'll be a link there that we can go live, answer any questions, any questions that you have in the meantime, just send them to me at info at mastermygardencom. So that's info at mastermygardencom, and then when we go live I'll take any live questions on the call but also answer the questions that have come in in the meantime and that again will go in to YouTube. The video will be recorded, put it into YouTube and then that'll be there as a grow along for future reference. We'll come back then in probably a month's time. We'll play that one by year in terms of timing, but roughly speaking, we'll go back at it again in a month's time. We'll have a look at the germination. We'll see at that stage if we do need to move to the next stage and then there'll be a final video next year, probably planting out, and maybe even another one where we're showing actual borders from all the various gardens across the country and the world. So I think that's.

Speaker 1: 6:31

That's kind of the layout of it, tech wise, as many of you know, I'm not the best at tech, but I think we should be able to get this relatively, relatively easy, but the main home of it is going to be on youtube. So what are we going to need for this? So, first thing, we're going to need seeds, and perennial seeds, ideally. So I will run through my list in a minute. So, basically, what I have is I have a list of 10 perennial flowers, cultivated flowers that I'm going to grow. I also have included in that, because I think it's important that, if we can, we should incorporate some natives into that and I have six or seven native plants that I can go to sow, and I'll explain some differences in these. I'll explain what each one is, but what I want you to do is to choose perennial plants that you want to grow. So this is my list. This is the list that I can go to use for my garden, the plants that will be planted out into my garden. But for you, you might have, you know, different favourites, different colours that you like, different ground conditions that may or may not suit some of what I'm putting on my list. So you go out and you choose some perennial seeds that you like. Uh, you'll choose them from any garden center. You know, from some of the online people.

Speaker 1: 7:51

All my cultivated seed came from seedaholic um. Not the first time I've bought from them. They're really good, really great information on the packs as well, by the way. So that's where I got mine, but you'll get them in garza, saying garden centers, online sellers of seed, and so on.

Speaker 1: 8:08

My native seeds came from sandra cofola, who is a wildflower, the wildflower expert in ireland. Um grows wildflower meadows all across the country. Um typically doesn't sell individual varieties, so I was just lucky enough that I live quite close to him. I was able to get individual varieties of seed off him. Typically, you'll be buying a full mix off him that will go out into a meadow, but for the purposes of this grow along, I'm incorporating some of these wild plants, some of which are available through some of the you know other, some of the specialist nurseries in the country. Like I know, the Future Forest has plants of some of the wildflower seed that I will be sowing, so you have options to get them anywhere, but I do think it's important that we you know as a garden podcast that I'm trying to incorporate natives where possible into gardens. So that's the first thing. With the seeds, we'll go through the list in a minute. So you're going to need your seeds perennial seeds, we're not looking for annuals. We're looking for something that's going to be there and there for a long, long time. Okay, we're looking for a growing media or a compost.

Speaker 1: 9:21

Now, this one always throws up loads of questions and loads of, I suppose, arguments in relation to peat-free versus non-peat-free and so on. There is some good peat-free seed sowing composts out there. The main one that I know is good is from a company called Klaasman Klaasman and that's K-L-A-A-S-M-A-N. Klaasman seed sowing compost. Now, that is a brilliant compost for germinating seeds and for growing on seeds. I personally will be using a peat-based compost and just using a peat-based multi-purpose compost. I find it's just so consistent for sowing seeds. Now, I know there's going to be people listening that are saying, you know, on the side of the peat debate and that we shouldn't be harvesting peat, and I don't disagree.

Speaker 1: 10:17

The problem I have at the moment in relation to peat versus non-peat is, or peat-free, is that the majority of what's in the peat-free compost are the good, peat-free compost, include things like cocoa coir, and especially when it comes to germinating seeds. It's very, very difficult to germinate seeds in shop-bought peat-free compost because the EC levels or the salt levels are just not consistent enough and you won't get good results. So the one that does work is the Classman one that has cocoa coir in it. That's coming from the other side of the world, so it's, I suppose. Choose your poison poison, I guess. I personally think that, for the small amount of compost that I'm going to use sowing these seeds, that it's okay to use a small amount of peat. I don't overuse it, certainly won't use it when I don't need it, but for the purposes of germinating the seeds, that's what I'm using. You choose your one, but that's what you're going to need. So you're going to need your perennial seeds and your compost, or your, your seed sowing compost.

Speaker 1: 11:26

Next, we're going to need some seed trays, and you can improvise here. If you don't have seed trays, I will be using, you know, standard seed trays. You can use milk you know milk cartons cut in half. You can use plastic cups, you know, or yogurt pots, or whatever the case may be. There is loads of people you know, online you'll see that there's any amount of options in terms of sowing seed.

Speaker 1: 11:53

All that you really need from your seed tray which, whatever that is, is something that's able to hold compost. You don't want it to hold a lot. Whatever that is is something that's able to hold compost. You don't want it to hold a lot. So you want maybe two inches, 50 ml of compost, and then you need it to drain from the bottom. So it has to be holes in it so you can't sow it and allow the water to build up inside. So it has to be able to drain.

Speaker 1: 12:20

And the pots are not necessarily for this stage, but we will need them going along. So after we've had germination, we'll have what we call seedlings in the trays. Those seedlings will need to be pricked out, which basically means we take those little seedlings and we put them into their individual pots. So seed trays for the original sowing little pots for the next stage, and then, potentially, we'll get some bigger pots for the stage after that. Now I will remind you about those, but initially all we need is seed trays.

Speaker 1: 12:53

We're going to need some labels, be them homemade or purchased, and those labels, again, they're just to tell us very, very simply afterwards this is the seed we've sown, because we could sow five trays, or ten trays, maybe put two different varieties in in a tray, one on one half and one on the other and if we don't, we don't label these, we're not going to know what they are. So we're just getting labels. I'm going to mark them. This is, you know, lavender, this is salvia. Put the date that we sowed them on and then that gives us a sort of you know, it tells us what it is, tells us the date we've sown it and for going forward, you can kind of see, because there will be slight differences in the germination rates, the speed of growth, the speed of germination in the various flowers, because they all have different needs and you know it'll take different lengths of times for various ones to germinate and to grow. So that's why we mark them and date them and then that's kind of all we're going to need.

Speaker 1: 13:57

So, just to run over that again, perennial seeds you choose your amount, you choose the number of varieties, you choose the amount of seeds, the amount that you plan to grow and I'll come on to that in a minute and some caveats there and some things you should watch out for Growing media of your choice. Make sure it's a good seed sowing, it's suitable for sowing. It's suitable for sowing seeds because not all compost is suitable for sowing seed. So I'm using a multi-purpose, multi-purpose food that are multi-purpose compost, which is a peat-based compost and that will germinate the seeds really, really easily using small amounts. But then you need your seed trays initially, and then you'd be moving on to pots and we need labels to mark it up. So that's all we need the steps. Then inown as soon as possible and follow the steps. Follow the tips that I give you in the video.

Speaker 1: 15:09

You're going to sow those and then within you know the temperatures are reasonably high at the moment. It is quite wet and rainy here all week, but temperatures are reasonably high and we are getting some periods of sun, so we will get germination relatively quickly from there. Then we're going to get germination. We're going to wait until we get to a certain size of a seedling and at that stage then again, I'll keep an eye on that and I'll keep you posted as to when I think it should be good to go and the number of weeks in between sowing and pricking out. But then we're going to prick out. We're going to put them into the next size pot. We'll work with a smaller pot at the initial stages because we could have quite a few seedlings here, so we're going to need space to put them into. So we're going to pot on, we're going to grow them on all over the winter. We're going to keep an eye on them, we're going to nurture them and come next it's going to be probably may or june of next year we're going to have good, strong plants. We're going to have plants that are ready to go out into borders. We're going to plant them out. We're going to give you all the you know the things to watch out for, things to be careful of as we plant out and then we revisit it all you know sometime july, august next year and hopefully at that stage we'll be looking at people's fully fledged, fully fledged perennial borders that they've grown from seed.

Speaker 1: 16:35

To run through the list of what I'm sowing, I know I mentioned some of them last week, but specifically to give the varieties. So the first one I'm growing is Lavandula Augustifolia. So that's lavender vera. That's the what's seen to be the, the English lavender. It's strong, it grows in most places here in Ireland. It has the beautiful lavender flower, as you know, but it's hardier. It's a little bit hardier than some of the lavenders that you'd see in the shop. So I'm growing that one Now I mentioned earlier on to watch out for the number of seeds.

Speaker 1: 17:09

So, for example and I'll give you the examples as I go down along but in that lavender there's 175 seeds approximately in the packet. I don't need 175 lavenders, so I'm only going to sow a small amount. So within the seed tray I'll sow a little amount I'd probably aim to have. I have a kind of a spot for them. I'm kind of aiming to have maybe 20 to 30 lavenders at the end of the process. So I'd sow slightly more than I need, but I'm not going to sow all 175. It's just a pure waste. So that's just something to watch out for. The next one I'm doing is for being a binary ensis, so that's the tall one. This pack of the seed has about a thousand approximately seeds in it. So again, I don't need a thousand of those, but I could definitely like like to have 15 to 20 something around around that level.

Speaker 1: 17:59

Salvia, superb, superb, blue Queen. So oh yeah, I'll give you the colours of the flowers. So obviously Lavender's purple, the Verbena is purple, the Salvia Blue Queen is a kind of a bluey violet colour. Again, there's less seeds in this. There's about 40 seeds in that packet, so I'd probably go to sow roughly half of that packet. Then Rudbeckia Goldstrom that's a yellow. That's the original black eyed susan, so it's yellow flower with a black eye on it. Um, really really nice. 85 approximately seeds in the pack. So again I'm going to aim for probably 20 there. Uh, lupins russelli the Page is the variety I've got. So that's a pink purple flower, about 90 seeds in the packet. So again, with all of these now I'm going to aim for about 20. Gaora Pink Bouquet is the next one. Only 10 seeds in the packet of that, so I'm going to sow all of those.

Speaker 1: 19:00

Orangerine Profusion so that's a daisy, a very profuse daisy. So it's brilliant in pots, brilliant in borders, likes dry spots, will grow in small crevices, will grow in a flower pot brilliantly. So really really good flowers from probably May time through to October time, so really long flowering period and a really good one to grow. So white daisy, like flower whites and pinks coming through initially and obviously yellow eye the whole time, the same as all of those, all of those daisies. So 350 seeds roughly in that packet. I'm going to sow a good few of those.

Speaker 1: 19:32

Echinacea paradiso tall mix. So that's a mixed echinacea with purples, pinks, whites, yellows in it. I'm going to grow all of the packet of that. So there's about 20 in it. So I'm going to grow all of those.

Speaker 1: 19:46

Aquagela vulgaris the variety is Nora Barlow. It's a beautiful flower. It's white, it's a kind of a double flower head. It's white on the outer edges, then turns to a kind of a pinky purple as you go towards the center. Really really beautiful flower and really easy to grow, one of the easiest to grow. It will self-seed in the garden, but it's a beautiful, beautiful flower. There's about 120 seeds in that packet so I'm going to sow maybe 20 to 30 of those.

Speaker 1: 20:17

Achillea summer berries Summer berries kind of gives the colors away, so it's all the summer, the summer berries. It's pinks, it's purples and various shades in between, uh, reds, pinks, purples, reds and all the kind of mixed colors in between. There's a lot of seeds in this packet, about 600. Again, I'm going to sow a very, very small amount to that and that's the 10 cultivated flowers. You choose the, the ones that you want to grow for for your, whether it's ones from that list or whether you want to source them yourself over the coming days in a garden centre or whatever. Just get yourself a certain amount and choose the colours that are going to suit your garden, that are going to suit your site, and then we can get some on then next week On the native plants. Then just a couple of these, really well, probably six. In total I have six, they're not all.

Speaker 1: 21:08

So the big difference with wildflowers you will notice, with the cultivated flowers, there is some differences in the germination speeds and rates of different flowers, and that's common enough. Some of them need a temperature for X amount of days to germinate. Others might need weeks. It just depends there, and with most of the seed packets there'll be good information on it. But when it comes to wildflowers they are very sporadic. So you can have one that's a really fast germinator or one that's a really slow germinator, but I'll give you a kind of an idea here.

Speaker 1: 21:44

So the ones I'm going to grow is greater knapweed. It's a beautiful plant, again, that is available on some of the specialist nurseries as a plant, you know, because it is a spectacular flower Bees and butterflies go mad for it. Purple flower it's a really special wildflower With that that, the germination times, and that can be very long and very sporadic. So it's not officially in I'm going to be sowing it, but it's not officially in the grow along as such. But I'm just, I'll just highlight it as I am sowing it.

Speaker 1: 22:16

Uh, birch for trefoil is a lovely yellow flower. Likes dry ground that one is going to be part of. It feels scabious, is another one that one is again slow germination. So beautiful flower as well, again loved by pollinators, but is sporadic in terms of in terms of germination, some really good ones in terms of germination and speed of germination. You have oxide daisy very, very good. It's not strictly speaking, before anyone tells me I know it's not strictly speaking perennial, it's officially a biennial, so that means it grows for two years, two years or two seasons, and but it does act a little bit like a perennial because it does self-seed and then it will regrow. So you always, technically, will have some of it once you have it in your garden.

Speaker 1: 23:05

It works brilliantly, works brilliantly through borders, works brilliantly in rose beds. It's a, it's a nice plant, it's a nice wildflower that will mix quite comfortably into borders. Sometimes wildflowers can look a little bit out of place, but definitely oxeye will will mix brilliantly into borders. White Campion is another one that I've grown. Again, the name suggests it's a white flower. It's a really special white flower, actually Quite unusual, quite nice and actually not that common. You know, as a wildflower You'll see it, but not in a huge amount of places.

Speaker 1: 23:40

St John's Wort is the next one, a yellow flower, medicinal. For some people who are into herbal medicine, it's medicinal plants. And then the next one is marjoram. So they're the wildflowers and I will be sowing some of those as well because, as I say, it's important to try and incorporate some of those. So, to run over it again, the video will go live on youtube on monday the 15th, which is next monday. So that's monday the 15th of september 2025. For anybody that's listening afterwards, the video for that will be on youtube. Go subscribe to master my garden on the youtube channel.

Speaker 1: 24:21

Then the following week, which will be the 22nd, we go live on YouTube. I'll confirm the time, but most likely 8 or 8.30 on Monday the 22nd. Go live there, answer any questions that have come in to info at mastermygardencom and any live questions that come up on the night, so that'll get us up and running. Get that'll get us to seed sowing. Seeds are done and then we're just going to go over the next couple of weeks, tend to those, watch them, make sure that they don't dry out, make sure that they you know that that they germinate, that we protect them potentially from potentially from slugs, if that was an issue and just keep an eye. I'll give you all those tips to keep an eye on all those things and then we'll come back and revisit it in a number of weeks time and we'll start moving on to the next stage. So it's going to be really exciting to see, especially when we go down the line a bit. It's going to be really exciting to see people's results.

Speaker 1: 25:22

So that's been this week's episode. I'll keep you posted over the next week, but that first video will be live on Monday on YouTube. So go subscribe to Master my Garden on YouTube. And that's been this week's episode. The Perennial Grow Along September 2025. That's been this week's episode. Thanks for listening and I'll tell you next time. Happy gardening.