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Annuals and perennials aren’t an either/or proposition
By Bonnie Bludgett
Photo by Judy White
They are cute little devils, those petunias, marigolds, and pansies. If you’re like me, you’ll first take the plunge with pansies, which will then collapse from heat stroke once you’ve filled every available window box with them. F. Scott Fitzgerald once described Minnesota as having two seasons, winter and summer. Spring? Don’t make me laugh, he supposedly said.
Nevertheless, we (I) continue to buy pansies and to love these cold- but not heat-tolerant lovelies as long as they last, which is usually until my birthday on June 18th, if I remember to give them a bit of shade. Luckily, as the pansies shrivel, the heat-loving annuals perk up. Petunias, for example, love hot and steamy.
Minnesotans, for the most part, could care less about such fine distinctions, opting instead to buy what looks pretty on the one day a year they shop for plants. That attitude meshes well with the annual, which lives for a single season and gives its all during that brief span of time—unlike perennials, which bloom only for a few weeks so as to have enough energy left to get them through the winter. Beginning gardeners tend to view this as a trade-off. Assuming that gardens are about flowers, they debate endlessly whether to go with annuals for their guarantee of color or with pricier perennials that will come back next season.
But there’s more to it than that. Though annuals generally have more vivid flower colors, perennials tend to have more interesting foliage and vary more in overall size. Annuals aren’t wholly lacking in the latter category, however. Sweet alyssum, certain gazanias, gerberas, hybrid pelargonium (geraniums), pansies, and lobelias top out at 8 to 10 inches, but taller varieties include snapdragons, larkspurs, leonotis, hollyhocks, strawflowers, statice, baby’s breath, cleome, and cosmos.
Annuals and perennials aren’t an either/or proposition any more than pansies and petunias are. The prettiest gardens make the best of each type. Just as petunias take over my window boxes after the pansies have fried, annuals fill in the gaps created by perennials before and after their bloom period. Annuals are also indispensable to container gardeners because they’re inexpensive, easy to grow from seed (much easier than perennials, for the most part), and don’t have to be transplanted into the garden at summer’s end as perennials do.
Before I go on with this comparison of annuals and perennials, I must explain that half of all annuals aren’t really annuals at all. We call them annuals because they can’t survive our harsh winters; in Florida they might live quite happily in the garden for years and years. Such plants can be brought indoors and occasionally persuaded to look decent in a sunny window. I know people who swear their indoor impatiens are glorious in February. Mine never make it past Halloween.
Geraniums, like many (not all) impatiens species, are tropical perennials treated in cold climates as annuals. Unlike impatiens, they can move directly from the front stoop to a dark basement, where they’ll go dormant just as hardy perennials do. They also make excellent houseplants. If you go that route, take cuttings occasionally for new plants because blooming nonstop will wear them out. Imagine going days on end without sleep. You’d wear out, too.
Coleus is another annual (this one is a true annual, not a perennial pretending to be one) that you can easily propagate from cuttings over the winter to give you a ready supply in spring. It’s also an exception to the rule that annuals are grown for their flowers. Coleus is a super trendy plant whose flashy foliage is the main attraction.
Isn’t gardening fun?
I hope you won’t fling this magazine across the room when I tell you that geraniums aren’t actually geraniums either. They belong to the pelargonium family. Geranium is their common name. True geraniums are usually called either hardy geraniums or cranesbills. They are perennials, too, and as useful in a Minnesota garden as pelargoniums are—more useful if you have a fondness for English-style perennial borders.
Many annuals are F1 hybrids. This means their seed is sterile and can’t be harvested for later germination. Hybrids’ sterility protects them from dangerous liaisons that would undermine their quality. You don’t want your purebred standard poodle hanging out with that mutt down the street unless your dog has been neutered (not to diss mutts, but hybrid annuals tend to be more vigorous, glamorous, and valuable).
Hybrids are wonderful additions to horticulture, though their popularity has triggered a movement to save nonsterile (open-pollinated) heirloom annuals, such as the purple-flowered ‘Grandpa Ott’ morning glory. While I’m not worried about old man Ott going extinct—I pull up fistfuls every summer—it’s nice to have an alternative to the beautiful but ubiquitous hybrid morning glory ‘Heavenly Blue’.
‘Grandpa Ott’ is an exception to another rule of mine: One of the delights of gardening is finding plants in unexpected places. Anal-retentive types typically aren’t so keen on this feature of what we call self-sowing annuals (a.k.a. volunteers). In my garden, I can count on finding snapdragons, violets, forget-me-nots, foxglove, hollyhocks, Solomon’s seal, lady’s mantle, coral bells, coneflowers, and columbine all over the place come spring. Note that not all of these are annuals. Some are biennials (forget-me-nots, hollyhocks, foxglove, and columbine) and some are perennials (coneflowers, coral bells, and lady’s mantle).
Most plants want to live on, even if only through their offspring. In this and a surprising number of other ways, plants are like people. If self-seeders annoy you, apply corn gluten meal in late fall and again in early spring. It’s organic and won’t harm your plants or your pets while suffocating seeds before they have a chance to germinate. Or, like me, just enjoy finding these self-seeders where they plant themselves.
Savvy Annual Buying
With garden season upon us, here are some tips for buying annuals:» Use the plants that are flowering their heads off to guide your selection process, but don’t buy them. Reach instead for younger, smaller, and more compact plants that are still in bud. These will peak in your garden instead of at the garden center.
» Avoid plants whose roots are flowing through the pot’s holes, especially if the branches are weak, yellowing, or otherwise not tip top. Go for bushy at the expense of tall. The latter plants are likely starved for sun and will have to be pinched back anyway before planting to improve their form and vigor.
» Before you determine where to plant a new addition, take note of its eventual size. This information should be on the plant label. Also take note of where it tells you to plant (sun or shade) and when to water. Plant labels are there for a reason.
» When planting, do the pinch-off thing no matter how the plant looks. Add compost to the planting hole and always give the plant lots of water.
» If you’re planting a container or window box, use specially formulated potting mix and remember to water and feed often, since plants won’t be able to reach beyond the confines of the pot for nutrients. A sunny location will dry out the soil much more quickly than a shady one.
» Deadhead constantly. Plants respond to deadheading by going into flower-production overdrive. Deadheading sends a message to the roots that, hey, we’re running out of seed-production facilities up here. Send up some more buds. This may sound heartless but it’s what annuals have come to expect. Anyway, I know for a fact they won’t take it personally. —B.B.
Bonnie Blodgett publishes The Garden Letter and is writing a book about smell.
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