Annual Flowers - Adding Non-Stop Color to the Garden

Garden plants are usually categorized as annuals, biennials and perennials. But then there are gray areas like hardy annuals and tender perennials. What does 'annual' actually mean?

What defines an annual plant as hardy, half-hardy or tender? Most gardeners think of a hardy plant as one that will survive cold winters. Hardy annual seems like an oxymoron, but the terms are actually distinctions used in England to classify the relative cold tolerance of newly planted annual seeds. This is what the terms were originally meant to define

Cool weather can be hard to garden in, because you never know how long it will last. But there are many annual flowers that prefer the cool days of spring and fall. Many cool season annuals look wonderful in containers and growing these flowers will make your gardening season seem that much longer. If you live in a warm climate, some of these flowers will bloom from fall through spring.

Self-sowing annuals are a mainstay of cottage gardens. Self-sowing annual flowers make a garden look natural, growing in among other perennials and flowers. To fill your garden with season long color, select from the following self-seeding annuals and follow the growing tips.

Many annual flowers offer the bonus of being self-seeders. Self-sowing annuals will weave their way though your garden, year after year, giving it a natural, cottage garden feel. There's a wide choice of annual flowers that will self-seed and it takes very little effort to get them going.

Annual flowering vines add almost instant color and height to your landscape. Most need to be started from seed, but they're easy to grow and require minimal maintenance.