Ask a child to draw a garden, and he'll draw some flowers. Give a gardener no more space than a front stoop, and what will appear there is a flowerpot. For many, flowers are the definition of a garden.
No matter what your level of experience, you can have blooming beauty in your life. But for your flowers to do best, it helps to understand a few basics about how flowers work and what they need.
Sun is essential. Building a flower takes a lot
of energy, and all a plant's energy comes from the sun. So most flowering plants need a
full-sun site -- where sunlight falls 6 to 8 hours a day all through the growing season.
Try Burpee's Sunlight
Calculator to test the amount of sun your garden receives.
Success is in the soil. Good soil -- not too sandy, not too sticky, with enough organic matter to make it drain well
and be inviting to plant roots -- is essential for successful flower gardening, just as it is
for vegetables. After all, vegetables such as squash and tomatoes are formed from flowers.
Test the pH and fertility of your soil with Burpee's Electronic
Soil Tester and then visit the soil
testing page for suggestions from our experts.
Annuals and perennials. As far as gardens are concerned, these are the two basic kinds
of flowering plants. Annuals go through their whole life cycle in one growing season:
sprouting from a seed, growing leaves and roots, producing flowers, creating seeds and then
dying. They are popular with gardeners because, with reasonable care, they bloom their heads
off all season. Perennials are plants whose root systems stay alive underground for
several years or even decades. The part above the soil may go dormant and die back in winter,
but the plant is still alive and will sprout again in spring. The tradeoff for perennials' long
life is that they bloom for only a few weeks or months each year. Exactly when and how long
varies between species.
Which is better? Both have their uses in the garden. Annuals are
great for places where you want a lot of flowers, but they generally need more watering,
fertilizing and other care than perennials, and planting them every year can be a chore. Perennials provide steady structure and form to a garden, and many
gardeners delight in the anticipation of waiting for their favorites' bloom time. Few are truly
plant-it-and-forget-it, but they do tend to need less care than annuals.
Long-term vs. short-term. Perennials, whether you buy them as seeds or plants, may take
a year or more to get established and bloom in the garden, but the effort will pay off for
years. If you want flowers now, annuals are the solution. But it's not an either-or thing; many
gardeners combine annuals and perennials.
This! No, that! Annuals allow you to change the
look of your garden from year to year. Even a garden with a backbone of perennial plants gets
interest from different annual accents each year.
Perfect for pots. In northern climates, annuals are best for color in containers. You can plant
them in the spring and when frost comes in fall, they're done. That's a lot easier than trying
to protect the living roots of a potted perennial through a cold winter. In climates where
winter cold is not an issue, some perennials may live in pots for years. You can combine
flowering annuals with perennials or foliage plants in a pot if they have compatible
needs.
Seeds or plants? Both annuals and perennials can be sown from seed directly in the
garden, but it will take a while for them to sprout, develop and bloom -- several weeks for
annuals, up to a year for perennials. That's why many gardeners start seeds indoors weeks
before it's warm enough to plant them outside. Or you can buy plants already sprouted. It's
better to buy plants that aren't in bloom yet, though; you want them to do their blooming in
your garden, not in the greenhouse.
Labor cost: The price of annuals' all-season bloom is that they need regular watering
and fertilizing. That's because producing all those flowers all season takes a lot of water and
nutrients, as well as sunlight. You may also need to deadhead -- pinch off dried-up blooms to
encourage the plant to flower more. Perennials aren't totally carefree -- depending on the
species and on your climate and soil, they also need some watering and fertilizer, but not as
much attention as annuals. The perennials that tend to need the least maintenance are native
plants -- those that evolved in your area and thrived, until gardeners came, with no care at
all.
In the shade: In general, the less sunlight you have, the fewer blooms you will get; in
too much shade, flowering plants may produce leaves but no blooms. Some species of annuals and
perennials can bloom in less than eight hours a day of sunlight, but you'll have to seek them
out. As always when buying plants, read labels, seed packets or catalog descriptions
carefully.
Right plant, right place. Often we fall for a flower on looks alone, regardless of
whether we can give it what it needs. But you will have most success with both annuals and
perennials if you first figure out what kind of site you have -- how much sun, what kind of
soil, how close to the hose, how much work you are willing to put in -- and then look for a
plant that fits.
5 annual flowers you can grow from seed
Here are five kinds of annual flowers that you
can sow from seed right in the garden, after the average last frost date for your area. Follow
the instructions on the seed packet. All these plants need full sun.
'Carpet of Snow'
Alyssum: Tiny, fragrant white flowers on low plants, about 4 inches high. Often
used around perennials.
'Jaguar' Marigold:
Bright orange flowers touched with maroon. Marigolds are traditionally planted with tomatoes to
deter some insect pests.
Sonata Mix
Cosmos: Daisylike flowers on tall stems in a mix of colors from deep pink to
white.
Cleome Queen
Series: Dramatic, tall stalks hold lacy pink flowers. Warning: cleome tends to
reseed, so you may get volunteer cleome next year.
'Heavenly Blue'
Morning Glory: Scrambling vines are classic
for covering fences or mailbox posts. Morning glories tend to reseed, so be prepared to weed
out volunteers.
