Oh definitely!!!!!! Cosmos rule the day to fill in spots where perennials wouldn't be appropriate. So I'd have to agree with you that they pop up over and over. It just takes a quick sprinkle of seed and wham there they are.

Foxgloves..I had great luck this year with them so you can bet your bottom dollar they are showing up everywhere next year.

and FERNS. I absolutely love ferns - they might be my very favourite of all time. They mysteriously seem to appear in all corners :)

I was just thinking about this this morning :)
Yes, I love repeating plants throughout the yard. Since I'm just relatively starting out I'm big on dividing and transplanting seedlings to new areas so I can continue to expand the beds (and create new ones) without spending a ton of money so I have a lot of repeats. It also helps to ensure I have color in all my beds at the same time without too much extra planning.
Each bed seems to have a few stand out plants as well so they all look alittle bit different!

I'm about to start. I've decided recently that some plants are just poor performers in my yard. They're going away. Those that do really well without extra water, agastache, echinacea, black eyed susans, veronica, salvias, will all have to be used more heavily next year. I'm tired of watering when the summer drought arrives. It's starting to get expensive. So these few plants will be repeated over and over in the beds. I'll look for different varieties and colors, mixing them with grasses and other drought tolerant plants. I really want to reduce the variety in the garden, while keeping the lush fullness. Big masses of repeating coneflowers, agastache for height, sedums for late summer blooms, yarrow in large clumps too, and veronica along the edges seems to be a good starting point. This fall, the gardens will get a makeover. Next spring, divisions and new plants grown from seed will have to replace things like Shastas. I'm hoping it creates a better sense of continuity.

Yes -- Using divisions or collecting seeds of the best performers is the only way that I can afford to have a large garden. My garden has harsh summer conditions (12 hours of sun, drought, deer, rabbits) and survival of the fittest is very important.

My favorites for summer:
agastache
salvia
monarda
coneflowers
buddleia
Russian sage
nepeta
spirea
blanket flower
verbena
cosmos
zinnias
perennial heliotrope is gradually being used as a common edger throughout
coreopsis is doing better this year
leucanthemum is doing better this year

Spring:
Japanese irises
allium
nigella
California poppies (though some are still blooming)
cornflowers
larkspur
rose campion (just finished blooming)

Herbs, such as thyme, are used for quick ground cover until I can grow more perennials to use in the space.

Cameron

Me, too for repetition. I think it not only helps the garden being easier care by selecting things that thrive for you but it adds a lot of structure as the eye sees the repeating plant in bloom. After you get that part in place you have a lot of holes you can fill with whatever strikes your fancy.

I remember reading once and I think it was Penelope Hobhouse who said - if you have a chance to plant, plant more of what you have and not something new. I think there is a lot of wisdom in that.

I love certain plants so much that i have them over and over again. My favorites to repeat are gauras, catmint, and daylilies. Ill buy almost any pink daylily i see! And gauras, tho they look similar, ill buy if they have a different cultivar than i have. I also love agastaches and salvias!
And for annuals i absolutly love petunias, so they go everywhere!

Yeah - both for budget purposes, and continuity. I love having self-seeders that I can spread all over the place, tho it does get a little labor intensive to watch the seedlings, then move them where I want them. I also have done a bit of dividing - some to get more of what I want, and some simply out of necessity. (When I moved from our old house, I divided the iris, and gave away about 2/3 of them!)

In general, I don't buy many of anything at once - but if it does well, I try to get more of it, lol. I've been very gradually building up my shade plant collection this way...

I like to repeat colours and shape so one bed relates to another. My sunny border relates to my shade garden in this way. So my favorite flowers are coneflowers, and purples and pinks colours.

Someone recently pointed out that I like heart shaped plants and it wasn't apparent to me until then. Funny because it's so true. I have hosta plants all over. I also have dutchman's pipe and later got myself a redbud tree.

Absolutely. Ditto what cindysunshine said. I pretty much never buy just one of a given plant unless it's unbearably expensive or I'm unsure of how it will perform in my garden. I always buy at least 3. I love a very lush look in my garden, and it would be really hard on the eyes if I didn't plant in drifts and clumps. Wintersowing has really caused me to have a lot of the same plants, too. Like Token, I'm culling and adjusting as I decide that certain things just aren't doing well or are too high maintenance and have become a PITA. Campanula and coreopsis grandiflora are on the chopping block for me right now.

Lisa

What do you plan to do with the plants you don't like or feel they haven't performed well this year? Why not donate them to a local plant swap? Or hold your own plant swap, if city/county allows.

There are many plants that are repeated in my perennial beds however I'm trying to be more careful of watering requirements so every plant doesn't always work everywhere. Some plants do well in dry as well as moist situations but they don't all. I also now have a shade, part shade, and full sun beds, both dry and watered, so only some of my common repeaters will work in all beds. This year I'm trying some in various situations to see how they perform.

I think shasta daisies are my best all round plant for any situation. They do really well if ignored and hardly ever watered as well as in the beds tended more carefully. They seem to be blooming in heavy shade and of course do well in full sun. Jacob's Ladder also seems to do reasonably well almost everywhere altho I'm not putting them out in the driest beds yet but may try later.

I wouldn't expect my roses, lavender, peonies, lilacs, petunias, and other sun lovers that need water to do well in full shade or dry beds so they are kept in specific beds for their needs. I'm sure in more southerly climates some sun loving plants may do fine in partial shade but this far north they need full sun for at least 6 hours.

Repetition of color is the way I'm tying all the beds together - still a work in progress.

I absolutely adore hostas and a shrub called Chelone lyonii (Turtleheads). I also have repeats of Echinacea, lily, Sedum, peonies and Heucheras up the ying-yang. When I purchase plants, I usually get two or three of the same variety, in order form a lush planting.