We usually reserve annuals for containers to place throughout the garden, in urns, terra cotta pots, old coal bins, wooden buckets, window boxes and hanging baskets. They make spectacular splashes of color all season, never looking fatigued, always vibrant, especially when first planted in early spring among the subtler flowers, and later in fall, when they experience a sort of resurgence as the garden fades. Containers require little maintenance, beyond cleaning the receptacles in spring, planting the annuals, and watering them whenever there’s no rain. They’re also portable, easily transported to colorless spaces, bridging the seasons of perennials by providing color between the peonies and the lilies, the phlox and the chrysanthemums. There are also varieties which deserve a place in the soil.
The most common annuals seen in the garden in earliest spring are pansies. Their cheerful, velvety faces, brimming in window boxes or edging a garden at the entrance to a home, harken nostalgia, and though they are usually spent by the first of July, I wouldn’t do without them. Sweet alyssum, a flurry of pristine white, also fills small spaces in spring, spreading to form a snowy blanket. Later in the season, impatiens, which comes in myriad, vivid colors, happily sprawls across the rims of shaded areas and begonias, valued for their clusters of red, pink or white flowers rising above glossy green or bronze leaves, are also attractive ground covers.
Another common annual seen throughout the growing season is the marigold. Its use was initially practical – with their pungent scent, marigolds successfully repel harmful pests, such as aphids and mosquitoes, while attracting beneficial insects like ladybugs, and were therefore grown in vegetable gardens. But they’re beautiful flowers in their own right, with their fiery hues skirting lilies equally ablaze, or contrasting with the smoldering tones of coleus. Zinnias also serve an important purpose. As the favorite flower in what was once called “the cutting garden”, their performance in vases is unparalleled, with a color range greater than any other, a variety of forms, from single petal composites to double ruffles and layers, and sizes, from six inches to three feet. Their usefulness in bouquets is not their only attribute. Zinnias require little maintenance, sprouting and growing rapidly after a simple scattering of seeds, to provide extraordinary color in the garden all summer.
Two other popular annuals easily grown from seed are sunflowers and nasturtiums. Like zinnias, the velocity of sunflowers’ growth gives them a ‘magic bean stalk’ quality, making them good candidates for children to start from seed. Sunflowers form impressive walls in the garden, producing enormous sunny discs in summer, and their seed heads invite feasting birds. The bright red, orange and yellow petals of nasturtiums provide a charming rim in the herb garden. Their leaves and flowers, offering a peppery flavor, are a wonderful addition to salads. Nasturtiums are among several annual herbs which include basil, rosemary, marjoram, savory, parsley, cilantro and dill, all fine selections for a kitchen garden where they can be readily and frequently snipped for dinner.
Cosmos is also suitable for the perennial garden. A sprawling plant with composite petals and fine, feathery foliage, cosmos will supply reliable blooms all summer long, spilling across a garden of pastels with varieties of palest pink to deep raspberry, or electrifying a garden of orange and gold with scarlet flowers. With its windswept appearance, cosmos works particularly well in a wildflower garden, where it will attract bees, butterflies, and birds.
Nicotiana, or “flowering tobacco”, offers textural interest in the garden with dramatically large leaves from which branches of pendent blossoms rise. Flowers are pristine white and intoxicatingly fragrant, especially in the evening, making this annual a perfect candidate for the moon garden, as long as it’s provided with plenty of space to spread.
Cleome is also a splendid annual for the perennial garden, reaching six feet to tower over other flowers with slim stamens of white, purple or pink and whiskery seed pods developing beneath the blooms. Attractive to pollinators, cleome makes a vertical statement whether planted in mass or interspersed throughout the garden. The softness of its hues and delicacy of its flower form call for similar companions, globes of blue balloon flowers, stalks of purple liatrus, wands of lavender obedient plant, and clouds of pink phlox.
Two exotic annuals to enliven the summer garden are the calla and canna lilies. Calla lilies have large, lance-like leaves and funnel shaped flowers, ranging from pure white to almost black, to include such interesting colors as a swirl of sunset hues, a dark maroon with an ivory rim, a pale pink with a green underside. Callas lend an air of elegance to gardens and to bouquets. Canna lilies are primarily grown for their ornamental foliage. Banana-like leaves in green, chartreuse, yellow, black, bronze, solid or striped, and one with variegations of yellow, orange and scarlet, cannas always serve as strong focal points in the garden. Their flowers, clustered on the tall stems and resembling iris blossoms, are equally impressive, furthering the plant’s tropical flair with bright reds, oranges and yellows.
Perhaps the most dramatic additions to the garden in summer and in fall are dahlias. With lush colors from the dark and sultry plum purple and burgundy and nearly black, the tropical blends of yellows and scarlets flushing and striping the petals, pastel pinks and peaches, fiery reds and oranges, and icy whites and greens, from diminutive varieties of one to two feet, to those which reach six, and with blossoms which are ruffles, incurved, starbursts, spikes, composite petals, teaspoons, or those that resemble peonies, dahlias are always striking, always serve as conversation pieces. They are perennial, however they require the removal of their tubers after the first frost to be stored in a cool, dry place for the winter. They are also expensive, and worth every cent, and the effort. If you haven’t yet fallen in love with dahlias, visit the Bridge of Flowers in Shelburne, Massachusetts in the fall when it’s lined with a most exquisite collection of them.
A word on chrysanthemums: while “garden mums”, those we purchase from nurseries in the spring, are perennials, “florist mums”, those available at the grocery stores in the fall, are annuals. We usually treat all of them as annuals, adorning our doorsteps beside the pumpkins, gourds, and cornstalks, and discarding them along with the Jack-O-Lanterns after Halloween. If, however, you want to cultivate perennial chrysanthemums, plant them in the ground in spring, and they won’t disappoint, extending their bloom time all the way to Thanksgiving.
Whether it’s drama, tender herbs, pollinating meadow plants, scent, spring cheeriness, or a splash of fall color, annuals planted in the garden along with perennials won’t disappoint, supplying constancy in the ever-changing face of the garden.
Dayna McDermott