“The first year they sleep, the second year they creep, and the third year they leap”
Perennials are amazing! They’re adaptable and come in an incredible array of sizes, shapes, colors, and forms! Nature Hills Nursery has perennials for every possible niche area of your landscape! Plus we make it easy to make the leap and create a big impact with well-established perennials for your backyard oasis!
Check out some of the largest perennials available at Nature Hills so you can enjoy the biggest, fastest, and easiest landscape impact possible!
Top 5 Biggest Perennials
Fast growth, variety, unique flowers and even reblooming all season, Perennials are one of those landscape must-haves! They’re so easy to grow when planted in the correct location, typically die back in the winter, but come back bigger and better each spring with perennial reliability, adaptability, and versatility!
Usually, though, they’re small and tuck here and there into the empty spots in the garden. But here are some of the biggest you can find for maximum impact and the fastest fill!
These are the largest overall Perennials you can buy for your landscape to create huge displays with ease! Ornamental Grasses, like the airy Giant Feather Grass, tend to get a lot of attention when it comes to large perennial plants, but there are so many more out there to choose from!
1. Matilija Poppy Plants
Big, fluttery white petals and golden pompom centers, the Matilija Poppy stands up and stands out at a whopping, fast-growing 6 - 8 feet in height and equal spread! Matilija Poppy (Romneya coulteri) is one of the most stunning West Coast natives to grace the wild. Hardy throughout USDA growing zones 8 to 10 they can handle some shade and sun but are very drought tolerant once established. Plus the huge blooms look great in floral bouquets and once the flowers fade, you’ll enjoy the ornamental dried seed pods for crafts and dried décor!
2. Black Beauty Bugbane
Not only a 3-4 foot wide and 4-5 foot tall flowering perennial, Hillside Black Beauty Bugbane is one of the darkest foliage perennial plants available! The black leaves are finely dissected and show off the spires of white bottle-brush blooms. Hardy throughout zones 5 to 8, these are incredible shade to partial shade perennials that provide a double dose of presence in the landscape because of their size and dark hue!
3. King Tut® Egyptian Papyrus
Also known as Cyperus, these water garden plants can grow 4 to 6 feet in height white spreading 3-4 feet wide. The fountains of unique grassy stems and flowering spires are iconic in the landscape, in ponds, water features, and in Rain Gardens! The plant can be planted in pots, along the water's edge of a pond, or even in a pond. King Tut® produces large heads of pendulous leaves; greenish flower spikelets can measure 1 foot across!
4. Pampas Grass
Big fluffy plumes on tall moisture-loving grass clumps, the Pampas Grass and its many variations can grow up to 10 feet in height when in bloom and spread to 5 feet across. Northern Pampas Grass can reach 12 feet and can grow about anywhere. Loved by wildlife, florists and interior designers, the huge plumes look as beautiful indoors as décor as they do outside along ponds, Rain Gardens, and in other higher-moisture locations around your landscape.
In areas where the Pampas Grass is too troublesome to allow, Maiden Grass like the Cosmopolitan and Silver Feather can be ideal 6-8 foot tall replacements without the invasive hassle.
5. Goat's Beard
Native Goatsbeard, or Bride's Feathers, Goat's Beard (Aruncus) features lacy green foliage and airy feathery plumes of white flowers for the sun or partial shade! Growing 4 - 5 feet in height when in bloom and spreading 3 - 4 feet in width, this is a striking perennial and is cold-hardy. Pollinators adore these plants and the flowers look great in cut flower arrangements! Plus these plants will gradually colonize an area by naturalizing when allowed, giving you an even greater impact over time!
Top 5 Tallest Perennials
Back-of-the-border spectacles, tall punctuation marks among the garden bed, or soaring screening plants, these tall Perennials will have everyone’s heads turning! Foxglove and Hollyhocks have the corner market on height, but they tend to be biennial plants more than true perennials. This plant can be a perennial in zones 9-11 but are great container plants down to zone 3 for use as summer accents.
1. Delphinium
Delphinium resembles Larkspur and biennial Hollyhocks in almost every way but is a fantastic perennial with tall, slender, tightly packed spires of broad florets. Available in a range of rare and lovely shades of blue, white, and purple! Hummingbirds and pollinators adore them equally and florists love them as focal points in floral arrangements! Check out Blue Lace Delphinium for a cold-hardy sky-blue plant that can grow 5-6 feet in height when in bloom!
2. Autumn Sun Coneflower
Big yellow Coneflowers in vivid gold with raised green centers, the 6-8 foot tall flowering stems of the Herbstsonne Autumn Sun native cultivar are vital nectar for pollinators and later on a seed source for songbirds!
Other large and in-charge Coneflower varieties to check out are the Magnus Superior Coneflower and the native Gray-headed Coneflower.
3. Compass Plants and Cup Plants
Big Sunflower cousins with huge leaves, the native Compass Plants can grow flowering stems 5 - 10 feet in height! With unique coarse foliage that turns itself against the sun, these late-season drought-tolerant perennial plants are perfect for towering pollinator garden focal points!
Similar to Compass Plants are native Cup Plants that grow to 4-8 feet in height but love more moisture to wetland-like conditions. Equally bold yellow sunflower-like blooms that birds and pollinators adore, Cup Plants spread by seed if allowed, creating small colonies around your landscape.
4. Variegated Shell Ginger Plants
One of the prettiest tropicals around, the Variegated Shell Ginger has dramatically green and white streaked leaves and lovely dangling clusters of white and pink blooms! In zones 8 and up it is used as a herbaceous perennial and can be brought indoors during cold winters. Great exotic specimens around the pool or on the sunny porch deck, Shell Ginger loves moisture and sun! But those blooms are high-end floral design focal points and are commonly used in Ikebana! So include this big beauty in your exotic cut flower garden!
Don’t live in an exotic area that supports Shell Ginger? Try Canna Lilies like Tropicana® for tall seasonal options that can be stored for the winter!
5. Lilies
Many Lilies (Lilium) grow to some pretty good heights while others tend to be in the mid-range, however, some like the Purple Ladies Lily can reach 4-5 feet tall when in bloom! While the Frisco Lily soars to 6 - 8 feet with ease! Both grow in a hurry and flower for an extended period each summer. Most Lilies grow to an average of 4 feet in height while Night Flyer can reach closer to 5 feet. Those bulbs gradually double and colonize a small area, giving you more and more blooms each year!
Top 5 Widest-Spreading Perennials
Big spreaders have a fantastic visual impact whether they grow tall or not! Fill wide-open voids within the garden fast! Some have huge leaves while others are just fantastic spreading garden gems!
1. Empress Wu Hosta
Big cool-green leaves easily twice the size of dinner plates, the Empress Wu can grow to a fantastic 5-6 feet in width each growing season! The flowering scapes reach 3-4 feet in height and enchant butterflies to draw near. Named in honor of the only female emperor to rule China, and this Hosta carries on the legacy beautifully! Cool blue not your thing? Look into Sum and Substance Hosta for bright lettuce-green leaves, or the two-tone Journey's End Hosta that can reach fountains 6 feet wide instead!
2. Clumping Bamboo
Clumping Bamboo is a wide-spreading and taller Perennial throughout much of the US. Spreading eventually into 8-foot-wide clumps, these graceful plants have reddish young stems and airy fine-textured foliage like their larger, more tropical Bamboo cousins. Not invasive as other Bamboo either, Clumping Bamboo is a fantastic fast cover and filler plus screening and creates gorgeous backdrops in a hurry!
3. Hardy Hibiscus
Big bold satellites, these Tropical Hibiscus cousins grow large and fast to their full size each year and display the most vivid open blooms you can imagine! Many Hardy Hibiscus, like Party Favor or Mars Madness can grow to 5-6 feet or more in height and spread about the same. Not only are the large perennials, but their flowers are massive! Sometimes up to a foot wide!
4. Ostrich Fern
Big lacy ferny fronds, the 3-6 foot tall fountains of the Ostrich Fern can spread up to 5-7 feet wide! Rambling politely throughout the shade garden, these big foliage plants and their edible fiddleheads bring coolness to the woodland understory while colonizing areas with pretty greenery!
5. Aralia
Bushy perennials that are more like shrubs, Aralia like Sun King are fantastic filler plants that add pizzazz to the partial shade! Reaching 3-6 feet in height and width, these chartreuse shaggy plants are highlighted by red stems. A type of Golden Japanese Spikenard, Aralia loves both heat and chill. They produce little white flowers with bird-friendly berries in the fall.
Why Bigger Perennials Means Better Perennials!
These are the largest perennials you can plant in your landscape, but Nature Hills kicks things up a notch just for your enjoyment!
Other growers pot up small liners and force them out in a greenhouse then ship them in the same season. You receive plants with lots of top growth and look pretty, but not a shred of substantial root system growth to support them once they’re out of the pampered greenhouses!
For years, Nature Hills has geared up our perennial production and started growing beautiful specimen perennials in big #1 container sizes that are 6-8 inches across and hold about a gallon of soil! These #1 perennials have mature root systems and establish much faster in your garden! Grown outside in a nursery close to where they’ll ship to, you can rest assured the product you receive has endured real weather and climate conditions and is ready to stand proudly in your landscape!
Plus their larger size will certainly make their presence known in your landscape - “leaping” much sooner for you! Those root systems taking off and getting established fast!
Why not pick up some of Nature Hills Root Booster with your order for lifetime root support with symbiotic fungal mycorrhizae that play an important role in plant nutrition, soil biology, and soil chemistry?
Nature Hills' #1 plants were grown last year, overwintered, and shipped at the appropriate planting time for your growing zone! Our robust perennials travel well in highly engineered boxes, arriving at your door happy, healthy, and ready for planting!
Be confident in your next Perennial purchase from Nature Hills and enjoy bigger, beautiful perennials and life-long support and inspiration to keep them growing their very best!
