Gardeners usually think of spring as the time to plant seeds. They bring out the timers and the grow lights and plant tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and squash so they can save a little money and get a wider variety of vegetables.

But if you want to save on perennial and biennial flowering plants, now is the time to plant them by seed. For newcomers to the practice, perennials are plants that come back in your garden and bloom year after year in the same place. Biennials, like lupine and foxgloves, produce the vegetation the first year, flowers and seeds the second year and then die – but leave behind seeds to restart the process. Heads up: They don’t come back in the same exact spot.

Planting perennials in late summer and fall does not require any special equipment. You can plant them outdoors in a sunny and protected area, in flats, pots or directly into the ground. You leave them outside all winter. You don’t even have to mulch them – but you could once the ground freezes if you think we are going to have a snowless winter.

In addition to the biennials mentioned above, other perennials that are good for planting now include echinacea, perennial poppies, catmint, hollyocks, shasta daisies, black-eyed Susans, coreopsis and bee balm.

If all goes well, and the seeds produce well, you’ll have enough plants for your garden at a bargain price and some to give away, too.

If you’d rather buy plants than grow from seed, now is a good time for that, too. Why? Because nurseries often put perennials and biennials on sale about this time so they won’t have to overwinter the plants.