Flowers to Accent Your Wood Porch Swing

A wood porch swing doesn't have to look stark or plain against your house. Flowers and foliage provide lush greenery and colorful accents for your swing and turn the surrounding area into a haven of peace and beauty. Unfortunately, sometimes picking the plants is the easiest part of your plan to transform your porch. Keeping the plants alive may present a bigger challenge.

As you select flowers to accompany your wood porch swing, remember to check the levels of sunlight near your porch swing throughout the day. Then check out the following no-fuss plants to find a few ideas that might fit the specific conditions that surround your wood porch swing and survive less frequent care.

Peonies shroud ruffle-edged petals with an outer layer of smooth-edged petals. They commonly come in shades of pink, red, or white, although you can find other colors, too, such as yellow or purple. These tough plants can withstand neglect. They do like full sunlight. Don't choose peonies for a shady spot, or for a spot that receives direct sun for a short part of the day. These stunning perennials can grow up to four feet tall and wide, so when you plant peonies near your wood porch swing, give them room to expand. In addition to their hardiness, peonies are also considered deer-resistant plants.

Columbine comes in an even wider variety of colors, including blue, white, yellow, pink, red, and peach. Sometimes the inner and outer petals match in color, and sometimes they contrast one another. They can grow up to four feet tall and two feet wide. Like peonies, columbine flowers enjoy full or partial sunlight. And they do well in a moist but well-drained soil. Aside from their stunning color and formation, columbines offer some other benefits. They can attract butterflies and hummingbirds to the area around your wood porch swing. And like peonies, columbines are resistant to deer.

Now, for those who need shade-loving flowers to accent a wood porch swing, astilbe can make a good choice. Although this flower is not so well known as the peony or columbine, astilbe is another hardy, no-fuss plant. Its small flowers grow in clusters along the stalk. As a result, each stalk looks like a white, red, pink, or lavender feather. Astilbe loves shade and moist soil. It can grow up to a little over three feet tall. While the astilbe doesn't typically explode, it can spread slowly, so you may wish to surround this plant with annuals, so that it will have room to spread in subsequent years.

Unlike the previous three flowers, hosta is not deer-resistant. However, provided you don't have a big problem with deer, hostas survive well with minimal care. They prefer part sun or mostly shade, as well as fairly moist soil. You can find hostas in many varieties. Some are small, while other varieties grow as large as five feet tall and four feet wide. Foliage comes in various shades, often tipped with white. Each stalk may contain several funnel-shaped blooms.

The peony, columbine, astilbe, and hosta are only four out of numerous choices for no-fuss flowers to accent your wood porch swing. Aside from their hardiness, these flowers are excellent choices because they require less of your time. And their lack of demands translates into more time you can spend actually relaxing on your wood porch swing.

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