Dividing Perennial Flowers

There are few more essential skills for the serious gardener than being able to easily and quickly divide perennials and easily propagate perennial plants. I confess I’ve done way too many of these “simple” divisions in my 30 year nursery career (or at least that’s what my knees tell me)

There are hard ways to do this and easy ways to do this garden and landscaping chore. The hard way is to follow some directions that suggest you use a garden fork. Goodness grief – that’s a lot of work to use forks to dig up the roots and then pry them apart.

For my .02, you simply whack the plant in half and be done with it. No fuss, no muss. Replant right away (or as soon as possible) after knocking back the top foliage so it doesn’t suck too much water from the roots and you’ve made more perennial flowers for your cottage garden.

You can use this simple technique to divide perennial sedum – to dividing just about any plant you can think of (always assuming of course the plant does propagate from division). Herbaceous perennials divide by division – not trees or shrubs (although some shrubs throw suckers and it may look like dividing, it really isn’t dividing a root – it’s dividing off a root shoot).

For more info on plant propagation, join us in the ongoing seminar series – this month we’re looking at plant propagation.

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