Flowers add a burst of color and life to any yard. They can brighten up the mood, draw attention toward (or away) critical parts of your landscape that need it most, or even just provide some much-needed pollen for bees!
These plants also look great in gardens!
What are annual flowers?
Perennial flowers come back year after year. Biennials grow to maturity in their first season, then produce flowers and seed for the second time before they die. Annual flowers offer the brightest and most diverse color. They’re short lived, but you can enjoy their long lasting color over a long time!
Annuals are a type of plant that have adapted to grow quickly and produce flowers throughout the season. Gardeners prefer these plants because they can be planted strategically for color displays in pockets around landscapes, but some annual species perform best when grown during the cool season in fall.
Why plant cool season annuals?
Cool season annuals are a delight to grow and bloom, with the right conditions. They might be able to withstand cold weather below freezing and they can also tolerate frosty conditions well enough as your ornamental plants!
The idea of “cool season gardening” varies depending on where you live. Gardeners in the far north can use cool-season annuals as their main landscape color throughout winter and early spring.
In the south, these early blooming beauties are not only hardy but they also brighten up landscapes from Halloween into Christmas and beyond.
Those in the broad temperate zone find that they can grow flowers later into fall or early winter with cold-tolerant plants.
The best cool season annuals!
These beautiful flowers are easy to grow and produce wave after wave of seasonal color.
1. Bachelor’s Buttons, Centaurea cyanus;
Bachelor’s Buttons are a plant with delicate, button-like flowers. They grow 1 to 3 feet tall on upright stems and have slender gray green foliage that attracts butterflies when in bloom from late spring into summertime.
2. Pot Marigold, Calendula officinalis;
Pot Marigolds are an upright herb that grows to 30 inches tall. The fuzzy stem has smooth edges and can be green, red or purple in color depending on variety; they also have yellow daisy-like flowers with orange centers which make great ingredients for salads!
3. Lobelia, Lobelia erinus;
Edging Lobelia is a low, trailing plant with intensely colored flowers in many different colors.
It makes an excellent addition to the front of flower beds or you can let it spill over containers where space allows for its offset appearance against other plants that prefer less light exposure.
4. Violas and Pansies, Viola tricolor and V. x wittrockiana;
In the cold winter months, you can bring color back into your garden with these hardy annuals. The Violas will produce 1 inch blooms in masses as long they are not frozen solid and suffer little damage from weeks of ice or snow cover!
They resume their colorful display once thawed out again because this type plant needs less moisture than most other plants do, to thrive well during snowy conditions.
Pansies are an excellent choice in the dead of winter when other flowers go dormant. They bloom slightly less but their larger size makes up for it- packing strong with many colors to choose from, you’ll be able to find one that suits your fancy!
5. Snapdragons, Antirrhinum majus;
This old garden favorite produces spiky conical spikes of clustered flowers in shades of yellow, pink and red. The taller the better! Standard varieties grow up to 36 inches tall while Dwarf cultivars will stay below 16″.
This bold colorful flower works well at the back border or as container centerpieces for your next planting project.
6. Sweet Alyssum, Lobularia maritima;
Sweet Alyssum is an excellent choice for mixed container gardens and border plantings.
The plants grow to about 6 inches high, with delicately lance-shaped leaves topped by tiny flowers that are sweetly fragrant; this succulent can become so dense it will completely obscure the original form of its foliage–a win in our book!
7. Sweet Peas, Lathyrus odoratus;
Sweet Peas is a cottage garden favorite with fragrant flowers in many colors, including white.
The plant usually has trailing or bushy growth habits and typically climbs on trellises or fences to reach heights of 6-8 feet tall.
8. Sweet William, Dianthus barbatus;
Sweet Williams are a carefully bred variety of flower that can grow 12 to 24 inches tall, although they’re usually more compact at around 4-8 inches.
The small flowers produce dense flat topped clusters in shades from purple and white, through pink or red, with multi colored as well as double bloom selections available too!
In addition to being early spring’s most fragrant blossom — sweet williams also adds pleasantly scented color into your garden landscape without taking up much space on its own.