Planting With Purpose: Flower Power!

How flowering annuals can solve your problems.

The bottom line is flowers make us happy. Colorful blooms, be they on shrubs, trees, perennials or annuals, lift our spirits and that’s the main reason we plant them. But there are additional reasons for including annuals in several places on your property, and many of them solve problems in addition to making us smile. Here is just a small sampling of the power of annual flowers.

Jazz up Your Shed

Garden sheds are not just serviceable…they can be charming as well. An easy way to make your shed into beautiful focal point is to install window boxes filled with annuals.

Make The Front Door a Welcoming Living Space

Too often we confine our outdoor living areas to the backyard, but there are many reasons to create places to sit by our front entrances too. For some people, that area might be the coolest part of the yard in the afternoon, while the back bakes in the sun. Others may enjoy watching their neighbors walking dogs or strolling in the evening. And for those who have a covered porch, it’s the perfect place to sit on a misty day. Pots filled with annual flowers can dress up a front porch and turn it into an outdoor room.

Block Off the Wrong Door

If you want people to come to one door but not another, make that clear by planting a large put and putting it in front of the entrance you’d prefer isn’t used.

Grow Bouquets for Parties, Gifts, or Creative Fun

There is something very satisfying about growing flowers for cutting. Whether you enjoy sticking a few stems in old glass bottles for an instant flower show, or whether you put together more elaborate arrangements, cut flowers are fun. If you know that you’ll be having family gatherings later in August, planting flowers for cutting now will mean that you’ll have plenty of blooms to work with later. Zinnias, Dahlias, Salvia, Marigolds and many other annuals are perfect for bouquets.

Jazz up the Hardscape

Sometimes we have so many hard surfaces coming together that there is no dirt to place perennials or shrubs in. Several large containers filled with annuals can turn a driveway into a garden.

Jazz up a Boring Fence

Pots of annuals can turn the back of a fence into a colorful display. Some people hang the pots from the fence on brackets and others make a wooden holder for pots. Come into the store to see several options for filling a fence with flower power.

Grow Edible Flowers

Edible flower petals make any dish more interesting. Calendula, sunflower, borage, zinnia, marigold and nasturtium petals are all edible. To my mind, nasturtiums are the most tasty, and both the leaves and flowers are edible. Try nasturtium flowers in fish tacos, a garden sushi roll and in salads.

Colorful Wall Plantings

If you have a wall in a sloping lawn, consider making an annual garden on the top. You’ll have colorful flowers all summer and the planting prevents people from “walking off the edge.”

Make a Garage Window Garden

Do you have a window on a garage that could use some pizzaz? Plant a flower garden in a large window box and add colors and textures to what is otherwise a plain location.

Fill an Empty Area With Color

Sometimes we’ve had an area cleared and for assorted reasons it can’t be permanently planted just yet. Why live with bare earth or brown mulch all summer, when you can have a flower garden in that space. Fill a group of containers with potting soil, mix in a handful of Shake ‘n Feed time-release fertilizer and another handful of Plant-tone organic fertilizer and fill those pots with annuals. The combination of the two fertilizers will feed your containers all summer and into the fall.

Bring Color to a Shade Garden

Many of the plants we love to grow in shade aren’t in flower in mid-summer. Bring color to a shade garden with annuals in containers. You can display those pots of color on an old piece of furniture or a plant stand that holds the flowers above the Hosta and ferns.

Your Deck Can be a Garden!

A collection of pots filled with annuals brings color, fragrance and movement to your deck. Sit outside in the evening, inhale the perfume from Snow Princess Lobularia or Heliotrope, and watch the hummingbirds come to your flowers. Salvias, Cuphea, and Agastache plants all attract hummingbirds.

Turn a Stump or Dead Tree Into a Garden

If you have a stump from a dead tree that hasn’t been removed, plant it with flowers! You can either drill out part of the center and fill it with soil, or use a Smart Pot on the top, covering it with bark or other screening.

Make a Welcoming Entry

Large pots or urns filled with flowers create an inviting entry to your home. For the fastest growth in containers use fresh potting mix and don’t cover the drainage hole.

Grow Some Understudies

In the theater there are always actors who are understudies…they are poised to go on stage if someone else gets sick or otherwise can’t perform. Since the garden can be seen as a grand, summer production, you might want some understudy plants as well. I buy a few six-pack annuals every year and transplant them into 6″ pots with fertilizer. These are kept watered and growing in June and early July, but can be quickly moved to a place where color is needed later. If you cut down your catmint at the beginning of July, for example, you’ll have space for more flower power. Or you may use the understudies for an area where spring perennials such as bluebells or bleeding heart go dormant in the heat.