LANDSCAPE: Landscaping With Annual Flowers

Annual Flowers, Flower Gardening

Annual flowers add a burst of color to the landscape and can be used to "fill in" during periods when your perennials aren't blooming.

Sweet Alyssum Flowers

Sweet alyssum flowers are one of the hardier "annuals." White sweet alyssum flowers are often used with salvia and ageratum in the U.S. for "patriotic" landscaping in annual beds.

Red Salvia (Scarlet Sage, Salvia Splendens)

Scarlet or 'red' salvia plants are popular annuals in the North American landscape. Red salvia flowers provide yards with a vibrant scarlet color.

Annual Flowers

Annuals are plants that complete their entire growth cycle in one season. For that reason they are floriferous for a long period, especially when prevented from setting seed. When plants of the annual type return each year, due to having hardy or half-hardy seeds, we say they are “self-seeding”. Many of my favorites are in that category. I love Shirley poppies and Love in a Mists, larkspurs and calendulas, and all of them will self seed in the garden, popping up in sometimes unpredictable places!

Secrets of Success

1. Plant them the way they like: from seed or from early starts; in sun or in part-shade.
2. Plant early starts with a little attention to teasing out the roots; plant the seeds at proper depth.
3. Water,water,water. If they get stressed from drying out, they will go to seed and stop blooming.
4. Dead-head. When they do go past their prime (in mid-July or so), trim off their heads (spent blooms).
5. They usually need some fertilizer. Not too much, but some. Good soil + organic fertilizer will give brighter and more blooms.

How to plant those flats of annuals

You bought beautiful annuals by the flat, you have loads of colorful annuals that in your minds eye will fill your garden with bloom, but now you need to put them in the ground. Here are a few tips for good success.

First, make sure you keep those plants well-watered before they go into the ground. They are growing in very small amounts of soil and dry out and wilt quickly, so keep your hard spent money and careful picking of the best plants preserved by keeping them watered. By the way, the best plants are sturdy, not leggy, and just budding, not blooming. But if your plants are brought into bloom by the nursery to better catch your eye…. here is the next step.

Cut off all those full lovely blooms. I know you hate to do it, I know it is hard to delay satisfaction of looking at all those little spots of color, but more blooms will replace them…. and they will have the healthy established root system to support them, especially if the weather hits a dry and sunny spell. Cut or pinch off the flowers.

You have cultivated and loosened the ground, it is all ready for your new plant , and now all you have to do is pop them in, right? Well, you could skip this step, but you want your plant to reach full potential and that means taking care of that all important root system at the beginning. When you remove the plant from its growing pack slice it out or carefully shake it out, then with a tool, or garden scissors or a sturdy twig, or your fingers, tease out the roots a little. That means when you see them curling around in the shape of the pot pull them free carefully and then spread out the roots in the planting hole. Once you get started it only takes a bit more time and effort for this step, and the plant will establish so much better and sooner. It seems like a fussy step, but believe me, it makes a big difference.

Fill in dirt around your plant and firm it in, and then water and keep the plant moist for the first week or so. If it is a hot sunny day you can tip its pot over it to keep it shaded for the first day or so, if you like ( this only works with single pots!!!) . Don’t fertilize anything yet, give the plant a little time to get adjusted to the shock of being transplanted.

When you plant annuals one of the lovely things about them is that they bloom their little heads off all through the season, but sometimes they are a little too enthusiastic about it and start going to seed. You do not want your annuals to go to seed, since that spells the end of their life cycle. And besides, they can start to sprawl and look a bit ratty. So you dead head or else give them a little haircut. In plants like alyssum, you give a haircut: just shear off the excess growth to make a more compact plant. With other plants with larger blooms you pinch off the dead blooms before they can set seed. This will renew the urge for the plant to produce flowers and give some strength back to the plant- since making seed seems to be an exhausting process.

Annuals can be fertilized all through the season. I know you are going to have a beautiful garden!

  

Best Management Practices - Annual Flowers

More than 80 percent of bedding plants sold for landscape use in Louisiana are classified as warm season annuals. Major warm season bedding plants include ageratum, begonias, cockscomb (celosia), coleus, impatiens, marigolds, periwinkle (vinca), petunia, portulaca, purslane, salvia and zinnia. Some other warm season bedding plants, such as sunflowers, torenia (wishbone flower), geraniums, gomphrena and melampodium are available, too.

Pansies dominate the cool-season bedding plant market in Louisiana. Other major cool season bedding plants include dianthus, snapdragons, viola and ornamental kale/cabbage. Alyssum and stock are two cool-season bedding plants growing in popularity.

Probably the key Best Management Practice for annual flowers in Louisiana is the proper use based on the purpose and site location.

Shady Locations

-Begonia, Coleus, Impatiens, Torenia, Caladiums

Hot and Dry Locations

-Periwinkle, Melampodium, Cockscomb, Zinnia, Purslane, Portulaca

Container Plantings

-Begonias, Periwinkle, Petunias, Coleus, Pansy, Viola, French Marigolds, Torenia 

Edging Borders

-Ageratum, Cockscomb, Alyssum, Begonia, Dianthus, Dusty Miller, French Marigolds, Pansy, Petunia, Portulaca 

Hanging Baskets

-Alyssum, Impatiens, Petunias, Purslane, Portulaca 

Fragrant Flowers

Alyssum, Flowering Tobacco, Petunia, Stock, Dianthus

BMP checklist:

• Select bedding plants for your particular site and growing conditions.

• Select varieties that have proven superior in LSU AgCenter trials.

• Properly prepare landscape beds.

• Plant at the proper time.

• Dead-head to encourage re-bloom.