With these chilly mornings, fall annuals come to the forefront of our attention. Many gardeners strive for a low-maintenance, colorful perennial garden that comes back year after year. But one of our favorite ways to elevate our clients’ landscapes and add new color each year is with annuals. Annual plants provide a low-cost, low-stakes way to get creative with filling in bare spots in the garden, containers, windowboxes, and more. We’ll go over some of our favorite easy-to-grow annuals for summer color and how to incorporate them into your landscape.
One of the easiest ways to design an annual container is using the method, “Thriller, Filler, and Spiller.” We’ll talk about easy options for those three as well as other favorite annuals for your summer garden.
Shade-Loving Annuals
Some of the most popular shade-loving annuals for easy summer color are Begonias, Alyssum, Caladium, and Cleome. These varieties can be found at most garden centers and are great for filling in the borders of your garden beds or adding to window boxes or containers in shady spots in your landscape. Regular deadheading of spent blooms help keep these varieties flowering throughout the season.
Sun-Loving Annuals
Some of the most striking and unique summer blooms come from varieties like Cosmos, Zinnias, Dahlias, and Lobelia. Many of these varieties are extremely easy to grow from seed or can be easily picked up at your local garden center. Bonus: Zinnias, Marigolds and Cosmos all attract pollinators to the garden and can be deadheaded to promote blooms all season long. Any of these varieties would be great options for the “Thriller” design aspect of your container planting.
Many of these annuals actually bloom more the more you cut them, so don’t be afraid to snip a few flowers for a colorful summer bouquet! Make sure to cut above the split in growth for the flower to ensure more stalks/blooms will grow.
Foliage Plants
Annuals like Caladium, Coleus, Ornamental Peppers and Purple Fountain Grass add interest all season long with unique foliage and texture. They are fantastic companions to flowering varieties in window boxes or containers and count as the “Filler” design aspect of your planting. Just like with deadheading flowers, pull out any dead stalks or foliage throughout the season to promote healthy growth.
Annual Vines
While we’ve covered the thrillers (flowering annuals), fillers (foliage plants), annual vines are the third important “spiller” piece to this magic combination. We like easy-to-grow varieties such as Sweet Potato Vine, Black Eyed Susan Vine, Morning Glories, and Cup and Saucer Vine. Consider adding these to container plantings or plant along your favorite trellis, fence, or other structural elements to climb up.
It’s amazing how much curb appeal several planters of annuals can add to the front of a home, or how lush and full a new garden can look with the addition of a handful of inexpensive annuals. No matter what your use for easy-to-grow annuals, we can all agree that they are a smart addition to any summer landscape.
