Here in Zone 5 around Chicago, we are cleaning things up for winter. Most of the blooms are gone other than Russian Sage and some lavender. But the nasturtiums we started from seed back in May are still going strong! Plenty of cheery yellow and red blooms and strong green foliage. Of course, we haven’t had a hard frost yet.
Not sure nasturtiums are my FAVORITES, but they sure outlasted the zinnias, marigolds, and cosmos that we started from seed. And none of our annuals provided such a consistently long-lasting show.
What flowers gave you the most impressive show this year? Annual or perennial. Feel free to define however you want. And please provide your location/zone.
I’m in Chicago/5b, too, and am proud of my annual pair of porch planters. In each, a dusty miller, a spike, dark leafy coleus & a big impatien. They’re drooping now but were 100% well into October. The planters are pretty big, 3-4 gals? and I water only about once a week. I’ve been using them for 15 years already and the soil is like a sandbox or dry sugar so planting in May is sinfully easy. Push open some dirt and drop in the rootball. Come fall, they easily yank right back out.
How? I’m in 5b and at best we get them as annuals that never come back the second year.
Here in Colorado you cannot go wrong with bulbs although my irises never seem to take off like I want. But my tulips?! A couple of weeks a year my yard looks like a slice of Holland. And daffodils galore.
Sorry if I was unclear. These are annuals. A couple of buck pack of seeds is still giving a good show. No idea whether/how well they will self seed. If not, I’ll spend another couple of bucks.
I enjoy all the responses. My OP was inspired by the long time period this year that the nasturtiums have continually bloomed. None of our other flowers have had such an extended blooming period. All the other annuals are long done. One arguable exception would be the various hydrangeas, which retain their faded, dried blooms.
Impatiens are practically foolproof, and they flower extravagantly for a long time into the fall. We just pulled ours, not because it was failing, but because we wanted their planter for some cyclamen for the winter.
And a variety called New Guinea Impatiens is hardy and showy and looks almost like a different plant entirely than garden variety Impatiens.
I was going to suggest zinnias, before seeing that the OP’s flowers were outperforming them. They’re still pretty high on the beauty to effort ratio, though.
'Golden Delicious has masses of chartreuse-yellow foliage scented of pineapple. Since early September it has produced increasing numbers of vivid scarlet flowers. Together with its neighbor, the purple-flowered Salvia ‘Amistad’, the show has been fabulous.
In terms of efforts to results ratio, petunias are my favorite. Buy a small tray for 5 bucks at a garden center and at stick them in a container or sunny spot and and you have nice flowering plants to enjoy all season. They are annuals, but self seed fairly well. Or just spend another 5 bucks.
Another vote for Lantana from coastal NJ. It blooms all summer and into the fall. Water it and it grows. It also attracts butterflies and hummingbirds.
I was going to say zinnias as well. Zone 6a here and we sprinkled three packets of different varieties of zinnia seeds out in the front garden in the spring. We started getting our first flowers in late July and the flowers remained continuously up through mid-October. The ones that did best were the giant varieties that get like 3’ tall. ‘Peppermint stick’ was one. I think ‘county fair’ was another packet. I forget the third. we did nothing in terms of maintenance, apart from water weekly and weed a couple times during the season
We have a lot of pots for flowers (along with parsley and basil) and we always do well with dahlia, zinnia, and geraniums (we also like to put sweet potato vine in some of the larger pots). But, this year we also tried two colors of Dipladenia and they were fantastic. They are climbers so you need to give them something to attach too, but both of them produced flowers non-stop and the self dead-head. These can be brought indoors and kept going, but our pots are too large to move so unfortunately the freezing has already got them. We’ll buy more and next year I’ll try to cut and propagate indoors before the freezing weather comes along.
We are zone 6b. Our large patio is southern facing, but it gets quite a bit of shade because of our big beautiful fir in the back yard.
I planted three blue & purple color/varieties of spiderwort 10 years ago and have enjoyed them quite a lot. The blooms only last one day but there are hundreds through the season and a new batch every morning. They’ve proven hardy and aren’t too common.
