One of the joys of gardening is learning about different flowers and planting them. If you’re growing your home garden, then you most likely know about the importance of flowers aside from aesthetic purposes, such as providing a habitat and food for pollinators like bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds.
To keep your garden looking lively and beautiful throughout the year, make sure to mix it up by planting the following:
Sweat Pea
Sweet pea or Lathyrus odoratus is an annual vine that grows around three feet tall. As its name suggests, sweet pea emits a lovely, sweet fragrance when it blooms in spring. Thanks to its flowers’ brightly-hued pastel colors of white, pink, and purple, sweet peas are considered pretty ornamental. Give the plant something to grown on and place it where you can enjoy the smell—by the doorway or a garden gate, for example.
VIBE’ Ignition Purple’
VIBE’ Ignition Purple’ is a hybrid of the Salvia and jamensis flower with beauty and brawn. Its vibrant purple blooms are prolific in summer and spring, but it also has excellent tolerance to heat and humidity. “Ignition Purple” grows up to 18-24 inches tall and wide and is perfect for cutting gardens, wildlife plantings, and flower borders. It’s hardy in Zones 7-11.
Viola
These flowers are frost-tolerant, and many overwinter pretty successfully, although typically grown as an annual. Their free-flowering habit and compact size are an excellent fit for container gardening. There is a range of bright and festive colors, including purple, white, orange, yellow, and lilac; there’s even a mix of peach and lemon colors called Sunset Boulevard. You can get violas at your local garden retailer.
Coleus
Coleus or Solenostemon scutellariodes isn’t just about color and or variegation; it’s about both. Its foliage has almost as many color choices as the variegation patterns. And there are more named variations introduced each year. Colors range from hues of yellow and green to purple, red, orange, pink, and bronze—some solid, others variegated in pretty patterns. Coleus is an annual plant that usually grows about 1o to 15 inches tall and features summer flowers.
Lavender
Lavender or Lavandula is among the most fragrant and beautiful plants. Its flowers dry nicely and are usually put in bundled sachets or potpourri and hidden in a sock drawer. These plants with multicolored leaves are also excellent at repelling flies and mosquitoes in the garden. Lavender is easy to grow if the place is sunny and has soil that’s well-drained and slightly alkaline. Most of the plants are hardy in Zones 5 or 6-9, depending on the species.
Jolt Pink Dianthus
This type of dianthus features large, vividly colored fringed flower heads on sturdy stems. Dianthus usually prefers the cooler spring temperatures, but Jolt Pink is heat-tolerant, so it should work well all summer long to make for stunning yard flowers. This dianthus is an easy-to-grow flower for gardeners who like their container gardening neat. Jolt Pink can be grown as an annual and is hardy from Zones 7-10.
Sunflower
Add some pretty yellow sunflowers to your flower bed. Some varieties of this plant can grow up to 10 feet tall! Pick one that keeps a reasonable height, and you’ll enjoy tasty seeds and showy flowers.
Blackbeard Penstemon
Blackbeard Penstemon is a cold-, heat-, and humidity-tolerant perennial that’s excellent at attracting hummingbirds. This plant boasts white-accented lilac flowers rising over dark-purple, mounded foliage. Blackbeard grows 28-34 inches tall and 2 feet wide, blooms early to midsummer and makes fantastic flowers and garden plants. This plant is hardy in Zones 3-8.
Sedum
Pick sedum if you want some wonderful flower bed plants. Nothing works quite like this plant for a swath of vivid colors in a flowerbed. It’s also a very popular target for bees searching for a rich source of pollen. Plant the seeds well apart and provide them with space to grow together over time.
“Appletini’ and ‘Pretty Pistachio” Coralbells
Dolce “Appletini” and Primo “Pretty Pistachio” may be coralbells (Heuchera). Still, they have enough charisma to hold attention by themselves. “Pretty Pistachio” offers medium-pink flowers rising over the foliage of mounded chartreuse all summer long, while “Appletini” features ruby-red flowers above dark-red stems from early to midsummer. Its light-green foliage is adorned with an intriguing silver overlay for added charm. Both plants are hardy in Zones 4-9, favoring part shade though accepting full shade.
Russian Sage
Russian sage is a drought-tolerant, sun-loving perennial with a lovely fragrance; in the spring season, cut down last year’s growth after new growth has begun.
Very Berry Creeping Wintergreen
Very Berry Creeping Wintergreen or Gaultheria procumbens is a tender perennial grown as an annual elsewhere but is hardy in Zones 6-9. Very Berry features glossy, dark leaves—the ideal backdrop for bright-red, fragrant berries in early fall and small, white, bell-shaped flowers in the summer. The foliage later becomes purplish, adding extra visual interest, making it excellent for home gardens.