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I must confess, at the beginning of my landscaping career I was not a big fan of annuals.

I must confess, at the beginning of my landscaping career I was not a large fan of annuals. Actually, I turned my nose up if clients wanted me to include them into the design. I thought: Those trite, garish, and annoyingly fussy items that quickly expire? You might as well throw your money into the compost. But now with years of learning, I?ve become enlightened. I'm a convert, in the event that you will. I now understand the reason behind annuals, how they could be valuable in a design and how exactly to properly work with them to increase their beauty and function. Yes, I'm now a planter of annuals (and quite a bit in all honesty). With that proclamation, below are a few lessons learned that hopefully can help you love these misunderstood plants, and maybe even spice up an existing love affair with them. There? click here s a good reason annuals have a short life span. Annuals sprout, bloom, produce seeds, and die all in a single growing season?unlike perennials which live for a lot more than two years. Most perennials work with a ton of energy establishing their root systems and sometimes at the trouble of producing flowers. Annuals, on the other?petal, use their resources to produce flowers and seeds rather than their roots that eventually die at season?s end. Every garden can reap the benefits of annuals. Think about it this way, if your garden held a performance, the leading actors and actresses will be the perennials and the annuals would be the supporting characters. So think about planting annuals to complete around a focal plant in a container, to decorate the bare feet of a shrub, to extend the blooming period in your garden and?sometimes?give a continual nectar source for pollinators when perennials haven?t started flowering or are slowing their roll. Annuals live to supply quick, easy, colorful, long-blooming color, and are relatively inexpensive, to boot. There are annuals which are actually perennials. Some perennials that aren?t hardy in a variety of zones are employed as annuals. Examples include: lantana, verbena, New Guinea impatiens, and dahlias (if not dug up and stored). Another good example are pansies which are short-lived perennials usually sold and grown as cool-weather annuals. And there are a few that act like perennials. The point that some annuals grow back next season is really a real bonus. They do this by cleverly reseeding themselves around your garden in the event that you don?t deadhead them and instead let them go to seed at the end of their flowering season. Good volunteers: nasturtiums and alyssum.

You?ll want to stay away from ?bully? annuals. Every hero requires a villain. And in cases like this, there are some annuals that can be a bully by excessively self-seeding and naturalizing outside of the garden where they displace native plants. Cosmos bipinnatus, native to Mexico, has been found to be invading parts of the Mid-Atlantic. Nigella damascena is another rampant re-seeder but can be curbed by detatching the seed pods before they explode open. Remember that a plant listed as vigorously self-seeding in a single state may be well-behaved and welcomed in another so check local resources if there is a question.