Annuals for your garden that bloom all summer
Annuals that bloom all summer long in the garden or cottage garden, fill in beds and gaps in mixed flower beds, and are also perfect for growing in pots and hanging baskets. Many annuals are unpretentious and settle in the garden for a long time, reproducing by self-seeding.
It is very exciting to create decorative compositions of annual flowers. In this article – photos and names of long-flowering annual plants, easy to grow and care. Remember that in the category of annuals often include and heat-loving perennials and flowers, which in cold regions are easier to grow as annuals.
To save time and effort, I grow only those annual flowers that require no special trouble and bloom for a long time, some for almost the whole summer. These are petunia, pansies, pelargonium, alyssum, verbena, marigold, nasturtium, lobelia, poppies, velvets (tagetes), nigella, forget-me-nots, fuchsia, cornflowers. I also grow some other annuals.
Pelargonium, petunia, pansies (violet), verbena, fuchsia, coleus, heliotrope and some other annuals I use for decoration of hanging baskets and containers and buy already in the form of ready seedlings.
Annuals for your garden that bloom all summer
These annuals can be perfectly combined in terms of colours and textures. I like to combine low annuals in a basket or large pot with plants that are ampelike and hang down beautifully.
Pansies I really love for their huge brightly coloured flowers. The purple pansies really remind me of my daughter Anna’s eyes – big and blue. You can buy pansies all year round in any supermarket.
Pansies (biennial) are usually grown as annuals. Pansies look beautiful in a wide flat pot on a terrace, patio, balcony, loggia or even a windowsill. If you don’t snip off the blooms of pansies, they will scatter seeds around. From these seeds the next year will grow and bloom violets, the flowers of which will also be very beautiful, except that they are not so large.
Annuals for your garden that bloom all summer
I am very fond of poppy soporific. I only need to buy seeds of the varietal annual sleepy poppy (Papaver somniferum) once. If I like a variety of poppy, I leave the dry seed boxes, and in August-September I simply scatter the seeds from them where I want to see the poppy next year.
So, I have gorgeous simple and terry black sleeping poppies of the ‘Black Peony’ variety growing in my garden year after year, as well as marvellous lilac poppies. Black simple annual poppies are my favourite, they bring so much drama to the overall look of the flower bed, scattered here and there in a mixed border!
Annuals that bloom all summer long
The bright colour of marigolds is pleasing to the eye and uplifting. I plant calendula with large bright orange terry flowers in a wide, low pot on the patio. Calendula goes well with deep purple fragrant heliotrope. Heliotrope, grown as an annual, attracts many butterflies and bees to the garden. Because of its sweet cherry-vanilla flavour, heliotrope’s common name in English is cherry pie. A well-known variety of heliotrope is marinum.
Alyssum is another favourite in our garden. Alyssum in our climate does not always behave like an annual. In warm winters, alyssum not only does not die, but continues to bloom! In a matter of months, alyssum grows into entire colonies, covering vast areas of the garden as a ground cover and blooming non-stop from the end of winter to the beginning of the next. Alyssum has a wonderful honeyed fragrance and combines well with all other plants with large flowers and leaves, either as a backdrop or to fill in the gaps between them.
Annuals for your garden that bloom all summer
Nezabuds are winter-hardy, but they are best grown as annuals. The forget-me-nots grow en masse in the back ‘natural’ part of my garden. During the summer cleaning of the flower garden, I pull out the greenery of the flowering forget-me-nots (and it is very easy to pull it out right from the root) and shake it slightly where I want to propagate the forget-me-nots.
This way you can sow forget-me-nots without any effort at all, and next year they will bloom and cover the plot with a solid blue carpet, because forget-me-nots are a ground cover plant. The forget-me-nots are also great for cutting, they look beautiful in a vase in water.
Annuals that bloom all summer long
My grandmother used to put the forget-me-nots not in a vase, but in a deep bowl of water with the stems in the middle and the flowers outwards. She pressed the stems on top with a porcelain statue of a ballerina. The forget-me-nots would rise and a very beautiful airy composition would appear in the middle of the table. Annuals for your garden that bloom all summer.
