Good news! Annuals don't suck!

They used to, but attitudes have changed....

Poor annuals.

I remember when I began to pay attention to gardens (I can tell you the exact moment — it was 1987 when I visited the Japanese Garden at Butchart Gardens in Victoria, British Columbia and had to pick my jaw up off the ground — but that’s another post…) — it was then that I realized amongst experienced gardeners, annuals were not considered very desirable. In fact, annuals were … hmm, how to say it … gauche.

The tradition for flower gardening had been planting masses of colourful annuals — and here we see orange Celosia marching along the perimeter of a pathway. There is no graceful movement here, no softening of the stone wall — all is rigid and repetitive — always with the inclusion of my own personal nemesis, the dreaded spike, that is, Cordyline australis.

This is a raised circular planting at Dow’s Lake, by Tina Liu, designer for the National Capital Commission (NCC) and in my eyes, a very talented plantswoman. I include it here to show how she is adhering to the tradition of mass planting with bold primary colours. But she is also very adept at more subtle colour combinations — see below…

It was probably in the 1980s when perennials began to gain traction. Before this, flowers that were available at the garden centres were almost exclusively annuals — you know, canary yellow marigolds, petunias, begonia, coleus, fire engine red salvia and zinnia. It was a bit of a wasteland other than this. I’m not sure what happened but suddenly someone said, “Hey, perennials are neat! You don’t have to keep replacing them every spring because they come back every year!” But of course, perennials present a whole new set of problems for gardeners — that is, they mature over several seasons, not just several months and on balance, their flowering time is relatively brief. And they, by and large, are not in-your-face colourful; but that was okay because someone decided that this kind of display was crass and that what sophisticated gardeners really wanted was a refined colour palette — and for most that meant pastels.

Ugh. Pastels. And that was the death knell for rich, deep jewel tones. For many years.

The rose garden underplanted with soft pink Dianthus at Francis Cabot’s garden in Charlevoix County, Quebec called Les Quatres Vents

But good news! It might have been Christopher Lloyd or Wayne Winterowd and Joe Eck (see Winterrowd’s book below) — who began to embrace annuals again and presented them to the gardening public through their plantings and publications…and so annuals and tropicals (or tender perennials) were suddenly “de rigeur”.

Published in 1996; note the foreward by Christopher Lloyd

And before you knew it, the kinds of annuals that you could purchase, either in cell packs or in seed packets, just blew up. Salvia was suddenly sky blue (i.e. Salvia uliginosa), marigolds were available in a blend of colours (and beyond that, their blooms were suddenly tastefully diminitive), petunias became million bells, begonias grew wings, and coleus became stunning stained glass!

Image by AvinaCeleste from Pixabay

And flowers that were once considered wild and not at all garden-worthy, were suddenly available in seed packets….like Queen Anne’s Lace (Ammi majus; white) and wild carrot (Daucus carota; pink)!

And all of a sudden, annuals, edibles and drop-dead tropicals were being planted in beds that were once only reserved for perennials. A visit to Longwood Gardens several years ago gave me the thrill of a lifetime, showing how the old fashioned annuals as well as new ones could now be used in striking colour stories…

Our very own Tina Lui (NCC designer) showcases her use of annuals alongside edibles in plantings every summer along the pathways adjacent Dow’s Lake. Here (below) she’s used both white and blue Salvia farinacea alongside white cabbage (Brassica oleracea).

And in striking contrast (below) she uses various colour forms of zinnia with azure blue salvia and chartreuse potato vine…some will balk at the combination of pink and yellow, but as Christopher Lloyd said,

"The limitations imposed by rules are a safe-haven, but the adventurous gardener will want to try something different."

Plantings in the beds at Dow’s Lake tend to have a low profile, so that they can be viewed as a carpet. In contrast, the beds at Longwood Gardens (below) tower over the visitor. This planting uses the tender purple foxtail grass (that is now ubiquitous in our area - Pennisetum setaceum ‘Rubrum’), love-lies-bleeding (Amaranthus caudatus), robust zinnia and not your grandmother’s red salvia (Salvia coccinea).

In the old days, annuals were planted in colour masses and the style was called ‘carpet bedding.’ Today, gardeners have shaken off those shackles and are using annual, tropicals or tender perennials not simply for their flowers but for their foliage, form and texture. The planting above has foxtail grass, papyrus and coleus (EDIT: as well as Pennisetum glaucom 'Jade Princess'; thanks Laurel!) combined to striking effect.

So the moral to the story is, be bold and be brassy! Use any plant you can get your hands on to make your garden sing. Grow unusual annuals from seed, pop a tropical with big leaves into your garden bed, use plants that are traditionally used in planters in the garden. Play with scale and combine annuals in colours that you never would if you were on the garden tour! You will be surprised what colours actually go together when they’re in the garden.