Hardy annuals to fall in love with flowers
/Annuals are like your garden’s party earrings.
With their life cycle running over just a single year, this makes them a flash in the pan compared to returning perennials, but their good looks and cheer certainly make up for it.
The yearly sowing, raising, pampering and planting out can be a little too much effort for some, but for those dipping their toes into growing flowers for the first time, these are most certainly your gateway to a season of blooms and the good vibes that go with them.
Within the world of annuals, there is a particularly favourable group for beginners; labelled as “hardy”. These are plants that typically can handle frosty conditions and will tolerate being sown direct in the ground, sometimes in late autumn, or all in early spring time. Consider this your heads up for planning and gathering-up some seeds now.
EDIT - in hindsight I was a little hasty to pull cosmos into the full hardy group! Still a TERRIFIC annual, but best to wait to plant out until after the frosts. Sorry!
Varieties of cosmos and lupin ‘White Javelin’ enjoy being picked and combined with other fun garden finds.
By all means, you can wait until fun punnets of healthy seedlings are available in the garden centres to skirt the seed raising. However, there are many independent growers and suppliers in New Zealand that are offering delightful, old-fashioned or rare options that you won’t easily find to be transplanted.
Some of my favourite suppliers are Kings Seeds, Nourish Gardens, Puriri Lane, Susie Ripley Gardening, Owairaka Seeds , Emerden Flowers and the Heirloom Plant Nursery. Beyond that, provided I know the plant I am searching for, I have had great success on Trade Me.
When purchasing seeds, even from home gardeners, they will likely come with a recommendation on how to plant. Each variety tends to have its own preferences of conditions, so I highly recommend a quick online research before you leap into sowing. You have the option of getting plants started now, undercover in a glasshouse, propagator or sheltered warm spot out of the weather.
Once your seedlings develop multiple sets of leaves, they can then be gently “hardened off” (shifting trays into the open air during the day but back to shelter overnight), before being planted out as the season warms. However, many hardy annuals can be simply planted direct into the ground in springtime. In fact, many plants such as nigella, cosmos, zinnias, poppies, sweet peas and annual lupins thrive when sown in place.
The real key to getting the best from your hardy annuals is to give them a nice sunny spot and keep on top of watering during their flowering period with regular harvesting or deadheading. Preventing the development of seed heads will vastly improve the distance of their display.
Some of my personal favourites are:
Cosmos
Over the years, I have dabbled with every type of cosmos I could get my hands. The regular, sunny trays of pink-and-white “Sonata Mix” from my local garden centre got me going, then I worked through a love affair with the novelty of the “Cupcake” variety. This last year, I grew ruby red “Rubenza”, a great addition, with its bold colour, and the smaller, delicate “Apricot Lemonade”, both beautiful in the garden and for the vase.
Cupcake cosmos
Cosmos ‘Rubenza’, ‘Cupcake’ and ‘Apricot Lemonade’ mixed with perennials
Poppies
Papaver nudicaule – Iceland poppies were some of the first flowers I ever planted. They behave as an annual in some places, but will attempt to over winter and bloom again in the right conditions. Planted en masse in a variety of peachy-and-white tones, their twisting long stalks and fragile petals pump up the atmosphere of any flower bed or vase.
This last year, I made use of some seed of Papaver somniferum – Breadseed Poppy from my sister. I planted this tall growing beauty in large tubs with other annuals. Its beautiful mauve petals unfolded so gently to reveal large, albeit it, fleeting blooms. Despite the speed at which they moved through their flowering period, it was the muted green pods on long strong stems which really captured my attention. They look beautiful and structural amid their softer neighbours and were a fun addition to flower arrangements. These are the poppies you plant out of sight of the road so no one gets any ideas about thieving for their “not-so-medicinal” values.
Iceland poppies
Flowers supplied by The Joy Farmer.
Breadseed poppies in the large planters, mixed in with bog sage.
Large poppy seed head mixed with annuals larkspur, Iceland poppy and nigella.
Flowers supplied by The Joy Farmer.
Lupinus mutabilis var. cruckshankii ‘White Javelin’
While this is a slightly elusive lupin to get your hands on, it’s one to keep an eye out for. I have been growing this religiously after receiving some seedlings from a friend three years ago. This lupin is a gift to any new gardener, with its incredibly resilient behaviour, outrageous flowering period and divine scented bloom. Simply push a seed into the ground and let it do its thing. As they are tall, growing to over a metre, it’s not a bad idea to stake for windy days. Provided you regularly harvest or deadhead its blooms, it will truly try to flower into winter.
Annual lupin; White Javelin
Ammi Majus – False Queen Anne’s Lace
An ethereal umbellifer with tiny white flowers and nice long stems, this is a wonderful addition to the back of a sunny garden bed, and equally, a mixed arrangement in a vase. I have tried my hardest to grow in part shade and the results were always a floppy plant, so would highly suggest giving it the sun it desires.
Ammi and its umbellifer cousins provide a certain whimsy and romance to the garden that other plants don’t.
Ammi majus
Flowers supplied by The Joy Farmer.
Nigella
There are multiple varieties of this beautiful annual to explore, celebrating its interest from flower through to seed pod. Like nearly all annuals, it prefers a sunny positio,n which has meant I have never quite had the crop I lust for. My Mum, on the other hand, has it keenly self-seeding in a warm bed to the point it has to be savagely thinned.
Look out for the special Nigella hispanica “African Bride”, with its fantastic, dark seed pods and Nigella papillosa “Spanish Midnight” – a variation on the common blue variety also featuring with black dark purple centres.
Other tough, but rewarding annuals to explore are orlaya, phlox, zinnias, snapdragons, sweet peas, cornflowers, annual rudbeckia, stock, wallflowers, sunflowers and larkspur.
Poppy seed heads with Iceland poppies, snapdragon, larkspur, ammi majus and nigella
Flowers supplied by The Joy Farmer.
Snapdragons, cornflowers, calendula and cosmos
Flowers supplied by The Joy Farmer.
This article was first featured in my Stuff ‘Homed’ gardening column for beginners , The Press, Dominion Post and other regional papers on July 29th 2021
All words and images are my own, taken in my home and garden in Christchurch, New Zealand unless otherwise captioned.
