Home Gardener's Annuals. Miranda Smith

       Introduction

       VERSATILE ANNUALS

      Home Gardener’s Annuals provides the information you need to include these remarkable plants in your landscape design. Annuals usually last one growing season, but they offer season-long color and texture to your garden. You can start them from seeds inside and then move the seedlings outdoors when the weather permits, or you can purchase seedlings and even started plants from home and garden centers. Use annuals in gardens and borders just as you would perennials and bulbs, and annuals are natural choices for window boxes. Also, containers of annuals allow you to change the look of your patio or deck as the season progresses.

      Annuals come in a variety of colors, leaf and bloom shapes, and sizes. For these reasons, annuals are indispensable when combined with perennials and bulbs. Use perennials to form the backbone of your landscape; enlist annuals to provide swaths of color in your garden and to fill in bare spots. And you can experiment by choosing different annuals from year to year for your garden.

      Home Gardener’s Annuals will show you how to pick the best plants and provide the conditions to make your annuals thrive. There is also a section on drying flowers.

       About Annuals

       Benefits of annuals

       What are annuals?

       Annuals are wonderfully versatile plants. While some gardeners don’t consider annuals “serious” garden plants, most think they are indispensable. A far greater variety of annuals is available in garden centers and seed catalogs than ever before—every year, you find a wider choice of colors, forms, cultivars, and even species.

       USING ANNUALS

      When used intelligently, annuals can serve a host of functions. No longer the poor relations in a flower garden, they are planted in beds and borders, either by themselves or mixed with perennials. They burst into lavish bloom early and continue to provide color as perennials come and go throughout the season. Annuals make excellent companions to spring bulbs, and their leaves and flowers eventually hide the yellowing bulb foliage. They can be used to fill gaps between shrubs and foundation plantings or can be grown around tree trunks, where their massed colors can brighten the shade.

      Many annuals are classic container and window-box plants; they bring instant color to patios, decks, porches, and rooftops. They can intermingle with vegetables and herbs to dress up the food garden or soften the harsh look of a front sidewalk and extend a welcome to your visitors.

      Annuals are a convenient and easy way to grow flowers in a whole spectrum of colors; you can find an annual to fit into any color scheme. Many make excellent cut flowers, providing armloads of blossoms for lavish and inexpensive bouquets. Some can be potted up in autumn and brought indoors to continue flowering well into winter.

       WHAT IS AN ANNUAL?

      To botanists, an annual is a plant that completes its entire life cycle in a single growing season. But to gardeners, the category may also include biennial plants that will bloom from seed in one season if given an early start indoors, as well as tender perennials that are killed by frost and thus treated as annuals in all but frost-free climates.

      The annual palette contains all the colors of the rainbow. This garden (below, left) contrasts golden marguerites and perennial tansy with purple heliotrope and verbena.

      Fill a corner with color by combining hanging baskets and pots of annuals. In the garden shown below right, sweet alyssum and lobelia freshen a warm mix of petunias and nasturtiums.

       Durable annuals

      Annuals growing near driveways, streets, and sidewalks are subjected to stress from dust, fumes, and traffic. Choose tough plants like those listed below for these difficult locations.

      • Cosmos (Cosmos species)

      • Sunflower (Helianthus annuus)

      • Blackfoot daisy (Leucanthemum paludosum)

      • Zonal geranium (Pelargonium × hortorum)

      • Petunia (Petunia × hybrida)

      • Rose moss (Portulaca grandiflora)

      • Marigold (Tagetes species)

       ANNUALS BY HARDINESS

       Hardy Annuals

      Grow best in cool weather; tolerate a reasonable degree of frost

      • Bachelor’s button (Centaurea cyanus)

      • China pink (Dianthus chinensis)

      • Flowering cabbage and kale (Brassica oleracea)

      • Pansy (Viola x wittrockiana)

      • Pot marigold (Calendula officinalis)

      • Rocket larkspur (Consolida ambigua)

      • Snapdragon (Antirrhinum majus)

      • Sunflower (Helianthus annuus)

      • Sweet alyssum (Lobularia maritima)

       Rocket Larkspurs

       Half-Hardy

      Prefer cool weather but are damaged by repeated exposure to frost

      • Blackfoot daisy, Melampodium (Leucanthemum paludosum, Melampodium leucanthum)

      • Dahlberg daisy (Thymophylla tenuiloba)

      • Dwarf morning-glory (Convolvulus tricolor)

      • Edging lobelia (Lobelia erinus)

      • Flowering tobacco (Nicotiana × sanderae)

      • Licorice plant (Helichrysum petiolare)

      • Marguerite (Argyranthemum frutescens)

      • Marigold (Tagetes species)

      • Mealycup sage (Salvia farinacea)

      • Petunia (Petunia × hybrida)

      • Scarlet sage (Salvia splendens)

      • Spider flower (Cleome hassleriana)

      • Strawflower (Helichrysum bracteatum)

      • Yellow sage (Lantana camara)