How Many Should I Buy?

How many should I buy?

A friend recently asked me “I bought a raspberry cane and planted it, but we hardly got any raspberries. Why is that?” “Let me tell you a story” I said. “When I ordered asparagus roots, I ordered 50, even though the catalog suggested 10 plants for a family of our size. When I ordered strawberry plants, I ordered 50. When I ordered raspberry canes, I ordered 25…then 25 of another variety. This gives us raspberry lovers enough for gluttonous fresh eating and making into jam. You got few berries because you only had one plant.”

A problem most people have when they order plants or bulbs, tubers, or rhizomes, is knowing how many to get, but the general answer (unless you are a very experienced gardener) is often way more than you think. When you go to a garden center or home store, you see rows of pre-packaged raspberry canes, for example, and think that all you need are a few (and honestly, well cared for raspberry canes will spread, but it will take a few years for one to spread into enough canes to make a big difference).

The same holds for flowers. As I go through my daily routine, I see little clumps of 10 daffodils in yards, hard to notice amid the grass. When I order common bulbs, I do not order less than 100 (one fall I planted 775 bulbs) (though I would not do this with very expensive bulbs). The goal is to have a large swath of color in your flower beds. The same goes for perennials and annuals- I buy a dozen of the same variety (unless they are pricey, are replacement plants to fill in a small area and/or can be propagated easily). One flowering plant is nice, but a dozen provide a larger visual wall of color. Another exception is when you only need one or a few plants for accent or emphasis. Of course this does not apply for huge plants or shrubs, where one is quite likely enough.

One other guideline is how many plants to buy is the rule of odds. Some landscape designers feel that 3, 5, 7, or 9 plants are more visually interesting than 2, 4, 6, to 8. So, buy in odd numbers (except for bulbs which you buy in large number- 250 is no visually different from 251). This rule especially holds true for shrubs and perennials.

So Happy Gardening and THINK BIG!