Notes

I must confess, at the beginning of my landscaping career I was not a large fan of annuals.
I must confess, at the start of my landscaping career I had not been a big fan of annuals. In fact, I turned my nose up if clients wanted me to include them into the design. I thought: Those trite, garish, and annoyingly fussy things that quickly expire? You might as well throw your money in to the compost. However now with years of learning, I?ve become enlightened. I'm a convert, if you will. I now understand the reason behind annuals, how they can be valuable in a design and how exactly to properly work with them to increase their beauty and function.

Yes, I am now a planter of annuals (and quite a lot to be honest). With that proclamation, here are some lessons learned that hopefully will help you love these misunderstood plants, and maybe even spice up an existing love affair with them.

There?s reasonable annuals have a short life span.
Annuals sprout, bloom, produce seeds, and die all in a single growing season?unlike perennials which live for more than two years. Most perennials work with a ton of energy establishing their root systems and sometimes at the expense of producing flowers. Annuals, on another? https://ello.co/bestreviewstips petal, use their resources to create flowers and seeds instead of their roots that eventually die at season?s end.

Every garden can benefit from annuals.
Think about it in this manner, if your garden held a performance, the leading actors and actresses would be the perennials and the annuals will be the supporting characters. So think of planting annuals to fill in around a focal plant in a container, to decorate the bare feet of a shrub, to increase the blooming period in your garden and?sometimes?provide a continual nectar source for pollinators when perennials haven?t started flowering or are slowing their roll. Annuals live to supply quick, easy, colorful, long-blooming color, and are relatively inexpensive, to boot.


There are annuals which are actually perennials.
Some perennials that aren?t hardy in various zones are employed as annuals. Examples include: lantana, verbena, New Guinea impatiens, and dahlias (or even dug up and stored). Another good example are pansies which are short-lived perennials usually sold and grown as cool-weather annuals.

And there are some that act like perennials.
The truth that some annuals grow back next season is really a real bonus. They do this by cleverly reseeding themselves around your garden in the event that you don?t deadhead them and instead let them head to seed at the end of these flowering season. Good volunteers: nasturtiums and alyssum.

You?ll want to stay away from ?bully? annuals.
Every hero requires a villain. And in this case, there are some annuals that may be a bully by excessively self-seeding and naturalizing outside the garden where they displace native plants. Cosmos bipinnatus, native to Mexico, has been found to be invading parts of the Mid-Atlantic. Nigella damascena is another rampant re-seeder but could be curbed by detatching the seed pods before they explode open. Keep in mind that a plant listed as vigorously self-seeding in one state could be well-behaved and welcomed in another so check local resources when there is a question.

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