Deciding where to plant annuals

By and large, annuals are resilient plants that tolerate a wide range of growing conditions. But some have preferences for more or less sun, and these specialists allow you to dress up such areas for maximum impact.

Planting in the sun
Full-on, warm sunshine inspires many annuals to grow robustly and generate loads of flowers. You can always tell if a sun-loving annual isn’t getting enough light, because its stems become leggy and lean toward the light source, and flower production is disappointing. So let them have it! How much is enough? Six to eight hours a day suits most. My favorite annuals for sun include cosmos, nasturtiums, zinnias, marigolds, and cornflower.

Planting in the shade
Banish gloom in your yard’s dim and tree-shaded areas with shade-loving annuals. Plenty do just fine in shade. Indeed, their flowers last longer without the stress of the sun beating down on them. White and yellow flowers really add sparkle, individually or massed. My favorite annuals for shade include tuberous and fibrous begonias, impatiens, and torenia. If your shade areas have poor soil or are laced with tree and shrub roots, don’t despair. Instead, just display the plants in pots, setting them here and there or in clusters. Or dig holes in the ground and stick the plants — pots and all — in the hole. Doing so makes changing them out easy, too. (A clever idea: Hook hanging baskets over tree branches and fill them with shadetolerant annuals.)

Planting annuals later in the season

Of course you can plant later in the season! Plant and replant all summer long if you want and into fall if you garden in a mild climate. As long as the plants are willing and able to grow and produce flowers, why not? Because blazing hot weather is stressful, avoid planting during such spells or at least coddle the newcomers with plentiful water and some sheltering shade until they get established. A dose of all-purpose fertilizer (applied according to the instructions and rates on the container) may also hasten latecomers along.

Planting in late spring

The majority of annuals are frost-sensitive. In other words, a freeze can damage or kill them. Frigid temperatures also make annuals much more susceptible to disease damage. If these small plants are damaged by cold, they may never quite recover. Don’t risk it: Plant your new annuals in the ground only after all danger of frost is past. The same goes for plants you’re putting in containers (though you can bring the pots indoors on chilly nights if you have to).

Gardening fever hits us all on the first warm spring day. But warm air isn’t necessarily what you’re waiting for — warm soil is. If the ground is still semifrozen or soggy from thawing cycles or drenching spring rains, it’s better to wait another week or two. No, you don’t have to take the soil’s temperature before proceeding. Just remember the wise advice of garden author Roger Swain: Don’t put plants in a bed you yourself wouldn’t be willing to lie on!

Filling in the garden after the last frost

If you live in an area with a long growing season, you can go ahead and sow annual seeds straight into the ground, secure in the knowledge that they’ll sprout, grow up, and start pumping out flowers, all in plenty of time. This approach is generally easy and cheap. Gardeners with shorter summers can either start seeds inside or buy seedlings.
Freezing weather kills or at least severely damages most annuals. Therefore, the trick is to know your last spring frost date and your first fall frost date —these dates bookend the annual-gardening year. (If you don’t know, ask an employee at a local garden center, a more experienced gardener, or someone at the nearest office of the Cooperative Extension service. Note that the dates are averages; they can vary somewhat from one year to the next.)

Starting with nursery, well, starts

You generally see nursery starts at the garden center or home store in mid-to late spring. Small annual plants are generally sold in six-packs or larger, with each cell holding a single young plant. These plants were raised from seed or from cuttings in a greenhouse and need a little TLC (shelter from cold and wind, regular water so they don’t dry out) when you get them home.
Here’s what to check before buying:

• Labels: Labels should contain useful information, such as flower color and mature plant size, as well as the name of the plant.
• Blooms: A blooming plant may be more attractive, and it lets you check that the color is what you want, but the flowers take energy away from the roots. When you get the plant home, cut or pick off any flowers or buds.
• Well-rooted plants: Pop or wiggle a plant out and check the rooting. If the seedling promptly falls out of the soil mix, it hasn’t been in the cell or pot long enough. If you see a mass of white roots, the plant has been in the cell too long and is stressed.
• Healthy appearance: Is the foliage crisp and green? Just a few yellowing and bedraggled leaves aren’t necessarily a problem — you can pinch those off. But you should look in the crown and the nodes (where the leaves or leaf stalks meet the main stem) for insect pests or signs of them.

How to start with annuals seed packets?

The almighty seed is the symbol of a new beginning. Buying your annuals as seed packets gives you four important advantages:

• You can get an earlier start. Starting seeds indoors takes time and space, but it’s not at all difficult — and it’s a great way to chase away the winter blues.
• Thanks to a broader selection in the seed-packet world, you can grow unusual annuals or new and different colors of popular ones. Look in seed catalogs that come in late winter, or browse the company Web sites. You have all sorts of wonderful choices!
• Quantity! Any given seed packet can contain 100 or more seeds. Even with some attrition, using seed packets is a great way to grow a whole lot of plants.
• It’s inexpensive. Sure, experienced gardeners bemoan the rising cost of seeds over the years, but, really, it’s still the best deal in town, always substantially cheaper than buying young plants.

Be sure to shop early for best selection, and always check the packet to make sure the seeds are fresh. (The packets should be stamped with an expiration date of later this year or next year or should say “packed for [current year] Store the packets in a cool, dry place so the seeds aren’t tempted to germinate until you’re ready to sow them in flats.

Combining annuals colors

As a painter or interior decorator may say, with justifiable envy, “Wow, what a palette!” Annuals come in literally every color of the rainbow, and the only limit is your imagination. If you want to be absolutely sure of a splashy display, you can use the following principles.
However, sometimes rules are made to be broken, or sometimes a combination idea happens accidentally or just occurs to you. Not only are annuals reliable, but they’re also forgiving. So feel free to try anything, removing or shifting plants around as you fine-tune. Yes, you can move an annual from one place to another without much trauma (just get all or most of the root system when you do, and water the plant in well in its new home until it adjusts).
Throwing a bunch of flowers together in a flowerbed or container can look like a lively bouquet, or it can look like a hodgepodge. So try to decide on a mood or focus and stick to it. Here are some useful color principles you can try:

• Go for the bold: Mix annuals in bright primary shades of red, yellow, and blue. Ideally, they’re of the same color intensity so one doesn’t steal the spotlight. Yellow zinnias with blue calibrachoa is a stunning combo.
• Hot, hot, hot! Compose an exciting, traffic-stopping display out of any or all of the following: hot pink, bright orange, ruby red, magenta, and bright purple. Try some bright orange marigolds combined with purple petunias.

• Soft and sweet: If you like romantic, soothing pastels, go for colors of similar strength or intensity; combine pale yellow, lavender, pink, baby blue, and cream rather than white. A tranquil pairing is lemon-colored osteospermum with powder blue verbenas.
• Aim for contrast: Colors considered opposites (complementary colors) —such as orange and blue, yellow and purple, and red and green — look terrific together. Orange nasturtiums topped with blue salvias is a good choice.
• Use neutral hues: These colors go with everything and thus make nice, calming filler in a display that may otherwise look busy or cluttered; try cream, beige, silver, or gray (supplied by foliage if not flowers). An occasional white-flowered annual is also welcome in color-filled layouts. Silver leafed foliage plants like the dusty millers can be nicely combined with any white-flowered plants like angelonias or petunias.

Taking advantage of annuals shape, height, and structure

Contrary to popular belief, not all annuals are little bloom-studded muffins. Hardly! Try to install annuals with a range of plant habits — variety is the spice!
Here are some good ideas for making annual diversity work for you in your garden displays:

• Small in front, medium in the middle, and tall in back: This tried-and true guideline works because plants don’t block one another from view, and the stepping-up effect simply looks great and adds dimension to your flowerbed. It makes a display look full and is especially effective in small or tight spaces. Thus, for island beds (in the middle of your lawn, say) or containers, you want small plants on the edges, then medium plants, and finally tall ones in the center.
• Repetition and balance: Plant so that one plant habit (or form) recurs at regular intervals in the display. This touch supplies continuity and naturally looks pleasing. Vary what happens between if you wish.
• Simplicity: The smaller the area is, the more important it is to avoid clutter. Use several or many of one kind of plant, together. Or stick to one sort of plant habit but vary the types of plants or the colors. Gardeners usually don’t combine annuals with perennials because when frost kills the annuals, big holes appear in the planting. However, annuals are great to add among smaller, newly planted perennials to provide fast color the first season. The following year, the perennials come into their own and fill the space once occupied by the annuals.

Cold weather annuals

Some annuals like it cool
Some annuals have their origins in areas with colder winters and mild but not blazingly hot summers. Plant breeders have stepped in to improve these plants’ flower production (the more blooms, the merrier!), add new colors, and select for compact plant habit (shapes or forms). The result is a huge range of good, tough plants that even gardeners with shorter growing seasons can count on. Examples of favorite cool-weather annuals include cleome (spider flower), pansy, Johnny jump-ups (a type of viola), trailing lobelia, and calendula (pot marigolds).
North or South, cool-loving annuals are often a fine choice for the parts of your garden where shade prevails. The shelter of a fence, pergola , porch, or overhanging tree keeps the plants cooler, preserving their flower color, prolonging bloom time, and protecting the plants from drying out in the hot sunshine.
Southern summers are generally too hot for cool-season annuals. Enjoy them until late spring and then tear them out as they begin to flag and replace them with something more durable.

Warm weather annuals

Lots of annuals thrive in hot summer weather, tolerating even periods of prolonged drought in style. Many annuals have this preference because their predecessors, or ancestors if you will, originated in warm, tropical climates with long growing seasons. All plant breeders did was capitalize on or preserve these qualities while improving the plants’ appearance or expanding the color range.
Some warm-weather annuals are actually perennial in some regions but are used as annuals in other areas because they’re not hardy there (they don’t survive the winter). For instance, snapdragon can be a perennial in the South but is used as an annual farther North. Some tropical plants are also commonly used for temporary display.
Examples of favorite warm-weather annuals include impatiens, Madagascar periwinkle, and marigolds.

Finding Flowers that Fit Your Garden

Modern-day annuals are impressive indeed. They’ve been bred to produce abundant flowers and lush foliage throughout the heart of the growing season. They rush to flowering because their means of reproduction is by seed. And to get there, the flowers must come first. This great output guarantees bountiful garden color and also makes most annuals great for bouquets. By the time fall comes and seeds form (if they do, before frost), the plants are spent and die. By then, though, you should certainly have gotten your money’s worth! Annuals are very gracious guests.

Not surprisingly, a huge range of annuals is on the market, and more annuals arrive every year. Demand is market-driven, innovation pushes on, and the upshot is that you can choose from many, many different annuals — no matter where you live, no matter what growing conditions your garden offers. The variety of annuals allows you to find countless plants that are specific to warm or cool weather.