Nordic Perennials: A Photography Project

This spring my family and I bought a summer cottage in the countryside of Northern Ostrobothnia. The ground was still covered in snow and we had no idea all the things that grew in our plot. It was exciting to wait for the snow to melt and discover what grows in our plot. I felt like little Mary from The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett; her insatiable curiosity that made it almost impossible to stay away from the little garden was the same I felt for our plot.

Our cottage is an old bakery that was built in the year 1900. The house had so much history and luckily the people who’ve lived in it valued that history and showed respect for it when renovating the place. I had the same question about the plot. I call it plot because until this point I was even sure, can it be called a garden. Being this a plot where people had lived for more than a century, could it be that also the perennial plants and flowers they planted along the way could still be found when the first rays of spring light would hit the ground and melt the snow?

This is when I started to value the role of perennial plants and flowers.

Did you know?

The term perennial is used for every plant that lives more than two years, therefore including also bushes, shrubs and trees.
The Merriam-Webster dictionary explains it well when it says: “Nowadays when we talk about “perennial plants,” or simply “perennials” (perennial can be a noun, too), we mean plants that die back seasonally but produce new growth in the spring. But originally perennial was equivalent to evergreen, used for plants that remain with us all year.”

Turns out, our plot was indeed more than just a plot, but an actual garden, thriving with every sort of perennial plant and flower and that’s how I got the idea of Nordic Perennials.

Nordic Perennials is photography project that was by no means intended to be an extensive documentation on all the perennial plants that grow in the Nordic countries, rather it is meant as documenting a slice of history of a Nordic garden.

I hope you enjoy the following photos. Every perennial is paired with their common name in English and Finnish plus their botanical Latin names.

Lots of perennial flowers and plants are edible. Head over to the Nordic Foraging section of this blog to discover more!