You want a border here about four feet wide, filled with old-fashioned perennials.
"An Alabaster Box"
Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
Paths twisted and turned among flowering shrubs, and clumps of old-fashioned perennials were mingled with the latest fads of the floral catalogues.
"Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906"
Lucy Maud Montgomery
The perennials will not flourish without cultivating and enriching the ground; their roots are in the heart.
"The Attache or, Sam Slick in England, Complete"
Thomas Chandler Haliburton