How to Use Annuals for Instant Color
Annuals are great for gardeners who want instant color and big impact. You can plant colorful annuals in the ground, in containers of all sizes, or fill small spaces that just need a touch of "something." Annuals are versatile in your garden design, as well: You can fill large areas with blocks of color and texture, or change color themes each year.
For the brief time annuals are growing and pumping out flowers, you get a lot of bang for your buck. They're hard to kill. Indeed, some of them keep blooming their cheery heads off even when you neglect them. And if you live in a frost-free climate, your "annuals" become perennials.
The main drawback of annuals is economic. You have to buy new ones every spring.
You can use annuals
To fill an entire flowerbed (this popular use is why some places call annuals bedding plants)
In container displays — in pots, window boxes, patio planter boxes, and more
To fill a hanging basket
To edge a walkway
To "spot" color in a perennial bed
In edging and as decoration for a vegetable or herb garden
To cover over or at least distract from a fading spring bulb display
If you shop earlier in spring (before the garden center has been picked clean) or go to a place with a big selection, you see lots of choices. If you find certain types too boring or common, look around for alternatives — one big trend these days is familiar annuals in new colors, even bicolors. Get creative! Have some fun!
Here are some popular annuals:
Sun-lovers: Angelonia, California poppy, cleome, cosmos, geranium, lobelia, marigold, million bells, nasturtium, nicotiana, petunia, portulaca, salvia, and zinnia
Shade-lovers: Ageratum, cineraria, coleus, forget-me-not, impatiens, nemophila, pansy, primrose, sweet William, vinca, wax begonia
Here are some unusual, offbeat, but still easy annuals:
Collinsia: An easily grown and graceful plant that looks similar to a blue snapdragon
Eustoma: A plant with very long lasting, silk-like flowers
Feverfew: An annual covered with double, mostly white chrysanthemum-like flowers
Annual foxglove: A plant with charming, nodding flowers on a tall spike, adding a dramatic vertical element to any garden
Honesty (money plant): An annual grown for its translucent quarter-shaped seed pods that make it choice for dried arrangements
Larkspur: A plant that's easy to grow by directly sowing the seeds in your garden in the early spring
Nemophila: A plant with sky-blue cup flowers on compact mounded plants
Nierembergia: A ground-hugging plant covered with purple cup-shaped flowers
Stock: An annual with heavenly fragrance and flowers from white to pink to purple
Torenia: A flower that looks like an open-faced snapdragon on compact plants, in shades of blue, pink and white.
Gardening Glossary
annuals
Plants that complete their entire life cycle within one growing season. The plant germinates from seed, grows and blooms, and then produces seed and dies.
Gardening Glossary
biennials
A plant that take two growing seasons to complete its life cycle. It germinates and grows leaves and stems in the first year; produces flowers and fruit (seed) in the second, and then dies.
Gardening Glossary
bolt
When a plant flowers or produces seed prematurely.
Gardening Glossary
cold frame
A wooden or concrete block box in which you can grow plants or hold dormant during the cold winter months.
Gardening Glossary
cole crops
A family of vegetables, including broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, kale, and Brussels sprouts. They thrive in cooler weather.
Gardening Glossary
complete fertilizer
Any fertilizer that contains all three of the primary nutrients, N-P-K (nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium). Phrase is based on regulations governing the fertilizer industry. Does not mean that the fertilizer literally contains everything a plant needs to thrive.
Gardening Glossary
deadheading
The practice of pinching or cutting off spent flowers
Gardening Glossary
evaporative-pad humidifier
A humidifier in which fans blow across a moisture-laden pad that sits in a reservoir of water.
Gardening Glossary
harden off
The process of acclimating plants grown indoors gradually to the brighter light and cooler temperatures of the outside world.
Gardening Glossary
hardiness
The ability of a plant to survive is called its hardiness.
Gardening Glossary
humus
A stable end product of organic-matter decomposition that's believed to increase microbial activity in soil, improve soil structure, and enhance the root development of plants.
Gardening Glossary
Bacillus thuringiensis Bt
An effective bacteria that attacks only the larvae of caterpillar family insects. It is safe to other insects, animals, and humans.
Gardening Glossary
macronutrients
Mineral nutrients that plants need in the largest quantities: nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, calcium, magnesium, and sulfur.
Gardening Glossary
mulch
Organic or inorganic material placed over the surface of soil, usually directly over the root zone of growing plants. Used to conserve moisture, kill weed seedlings, modify soil temperature, provide attractive covering to garden beds.
Gardening Glossary
organic matter
Once-living stuff like compost, sawdust, animal manure, ground bark, grass clippings, and leaf mold (composted tree leaves). Used to enrich soil and improve soil texture.
Gardening Glossary
perennials
Any plant with a life cycle of three or more years. Herbaceous (non-woody) perennials include flowering plants and herbs, mainly. Woody perennials include trees and shrubs. Longevity depends on the plant and growing conditions.
Gardening Glossary
pH
The measure of soil's acidity. Soil with low pH means it's too acidic; soil with high pH means it's alkaline. Most plants grow best in soil with a pH value between 6.5 and 7.2. Neutral soils measure 7.
Gardening Glossary
photosynthesis
The process through which plants take nutrients from the air and from the water in the soil to produce sugars that fuels the plant's growth.
Gardening Glossary
primary nutrients
Nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium are the three nutrients plants need in the largest quantities.
Gardening Glossary
root crops
Plants with edible underground roots such as onions, carrots, beets, potatoes, turnips. Most root crops are cold-weather crops.
Gardening Glossary
self-blanching
A type of cauliflower with leaves that naturally curl over the head and exclude light. Requires cool temperatures for leaves to curl effectively.
Gardening Glossary
sets
Small onion bulbs, about 1/2-inch wide, that were started from seed the previous year. Grow onion sets with the pointy end up.
Gardening Glossary
side-dressing
The act of adding a small amount of fertilizer around or "on the side" of plants after they're growing.
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succession planting
Planting small, 2-to-4-foot patches of plants every two weeks throughout the growing season so that you can harvest a crop over an extended period of time.
Gardening Glossary
thinning
The act of cutting the least robust seedlings in your garden to give the healthier plants more room to grow.
Gardening Glossary
vining crops
Crops that grow on vines, such as cucumbers, melons, pumpkins, and winter squash. They usually require support (staking, trellising, etc.) to keep them off the ground.
