How to choose and grow the best perennials – part ii

- By Patricia Hanbidge

June 09, 2025

key points from this story:

• Second article in perennial series
• Perennials provide years of garden beauty
• Choose plants for season-long colour
• Mums bloom late in the season
• Prairie climates need Morden Mums
• Low-maintenance, upright, spreading growth

This is the second article in the series on my choice of some of the best perennials to plant in your garden. Perennials give you many years of beauty and should be included in the garden, in spite of the challenge of planting them appropriately. I feel that it is important to plant perennials that give you colour throughout the season and extremely attractive to butterflies and bees. They need to be well-behaved in the garden as the last thing that we need is planting a long-term problem plant.

A selection of Chrysanthemums (Mums) is one of the best perennials to provide lots of great colour late in the season. However, there is a great difference between the type of chrysanthemum that will bloom in areas that have short seasons as Mums are a type of flower that is triggered by the daylength. It is actually the night length that is important but for some silly reason when plants need a certain amount of dark hours to trigger the bloom we call it “daylength”. The confusing world of horticulture and gardening continues! At any rate, Mums are a perennial that blooms late in the season when our nights are getting much longer than the day. Unfortunately, when you live in an area whose growing season is short and it is also a cooler climate, those short days (long nights) are often after we get a killing frost and daytime temperatures are not very hospitable either to growing outdoors. Thus, the Morden series of Mums began and these Mums use not only the length of night but also the temperature to trigger the bloom. So in order to get Mums to bloom prior to the temperature becoming too cold outside, it is necessary in the prairie climate to grow “Morden Mums”.

For my garden, I chose a selection of Mums that will successfully give us colour in September most years when most of the other perennials are long past blooming. Unless otherwise stated, they are all about 18 inches (45cm) in height and will spread to about 30 inches (75cm). These Mums have an upright spreading habit of growth with a very fine texture. This is truly a low-maintenance herbaceous perennial.

Chrysanthemum x morifolium ‘Jefbiz’ which is also known as the Showbiz Mum was developed with a cross between Morden Fiesta and Morden Canary and has an abundance of lovely light purple pompom like flowers.

Chrysanthemum x morifolium ‘Jefdream’ or Dreamweaver Mum is a bit larger Mum with a height of 30 inches (75cm) and spreads 48 inches (120cm). It has lovely soft mauve-coloured flowers with flared trumpet-shaped petals on the margins and an attractive yellow centre.

Chrysanthemum x morifolium ‘Jefdust’ or Stardust Mum produces an abundance of dusty rose flowers with fluted petals.

Chrysanthemum x morifolium ‘Jefstorm’ or Firestorm Mum is about 22 inches (55cm) in height and spreads 40 inches (100 cm) with outstanding deep red petals with an attractive yellow centre.

Chrysanthemum x morifolium ‘Jefsurge’ or Power Surge Mum has fully double red flowers.

Chrysanthemum x morifolium ‘Jeftail’ is about 30 inches high (75cm) and spreads about 48 inches (120 cm) and has outstanding peachy-orange flower buds that open to double blossoms of tangerine that fade to light yellow.

Chrysanthemum x morifolium ‘Morden Fiesta’ has stunning purple flowers with a yellow centre.

Chrysanthemum x morifolium ‘Prairie Lavender’ has soft pink to lavender blooms.

It is my hope that this article will entice you to try growing the Morden Mums!