What are annuals good for? Choose them for prolific beauty in short lifespan

Bill Finch By Bill Finch
on May 25, 2014 at 7:45 AM, updated May 25, 2014 at 12:00 PM
_DSC0146 (1).jpgMerlin Blue Morn petunia. (Bill Finch) 

What wasn't a bush and wasn't a tree was -- in the Gulf Coast language I grew up with -- simply referred to as a flower.

Just so you'll know next time you engage one of my people in conversation, the thing referred to as a flower in Alabama, Mississippi and northwest Florida isn't just the brightly colored, sweet-smelling, tissue-textured outburst between the leaves at the tip of the twigs. It can also be the thing that produced the flower, the flower-producing plant in its entirety.

As in, "I'm going over to cousin Mary Jane's yard to dig me up some flowers."

None of this nonsense about annuals and perennials and herbs and bulbous this and tuberous that. If you can't eat it and it isn't generally recognized as a weed, then the whole plant is sure enough a flower.

In general, I can't help but be supportive of my native tongue.

But it can be confusing for those who are just starting out in gardening. Many people don't recognize that there's a big difference between flowers that are annuals and flowers that are perennials, and it centers on something very important to gardeners.

Namely, annuals are generally expected to last only a year (and often less); perennials are supposed to last many years. And I've seen a whole lot of folks get awful upset when they discover that the flowers (in that grand old Southern sense) they have labored to plant are going to poop out in a few weeks or months.

Those nice folks at the Big Box stores have helped to blur the distinction even more. They don't really care to help you distinguish between an annual and perennial, and in most cases, they probably don't know the difference themselves. So last fall, I winced when I saw local gardeners unloading a trunkful of tropical plants (you know, crotons and what not) that they just bought at the friendly Big Box.

It was obvious, as they were planting them that November day, that no one had bothered to tell them that tropicals like crotons are not even close to being winter hardy in our climate, and therefore we should be growing them as annuals, with the certain knowledge they're going to be dead as a doornail after the first hard frost in December.

So maybe it's good if we resurrect those tough old terms like annual and perennial, to save ourselves the agony of wasting our time on doomed flowers.

Once you recognize that there's a whole class of "flowers" that at best survive for a year, and often only a few months, you're naturally going to wonder why anybody would even bother with annuals.

Well, I've got several plants in my garden this year -- cleomes, cosmos and petunias -- that remind me clearly what annuals are good for. Grew them all myself from seed, without much trouble. And even though I know they're all going to give up the ghost probably before the summer is out, I'm happy. Here's why:

Annuals bloom themselves to death

Maybe it's because they figure they're going to die quick anyway, so what the hay, many of them put on an exhausting display of blooms.

I'll have had three or so months of solid continuous and spectacular bloom out of all of them, and that's hard to beat. Most perennials (which have to reserve enough energy to grow over the winter) aren't capable of anything like that. Shrubs and trees are great, but you feel lucky to get two or three weeks of bloom out of most of them.

Annuals are precocious little devils.

The short life span and aggressive reproductive habits of annuals means there's a short turn-around time for gardeners and hybridizers.

So in a few weeks, I can have plants in full flower from seed. It might have taken a perennial several years to put on that good a show.

And in a few years, plant hybridizers can take a ho-hum flower and turn it into a Neon Spectacle from Outer Space.

Consider petunias. They're tomato relatives (believe it or not) that started with a rather mundane pale violet flower. The selection at the Big Box stores may still be rather monotonous, but I bought seeds this year for the most spectacular salmony orange and vibrantly royal blue petunias. I planted them in early March -- a little bit late for sowing petunias -- but by golly, they're already in full bloom.

And look at those crazy colors. How in the world did they get bright orange and vibrant blue from the same plant? You can just about use petunias like interior decorators use pillows; you can find a color to mix and match with any yard décor. Do you know how many lifetimes it would take to get a perennial to express so many different and varied colors?

Annuals aren't just short and sweet; they're also generally sweet and short

It's much easier for hybridizers to develop dwarf annuals. Obviously, annuals don't live as long, so you don't have to worry about your dainty little flower turning into a gangly, overbearing teenager next year. In our climate, many annuals match their efforts with a season, three or four months or so, and then are pulled out before they ever have a chance to get overgrown.

Besides, annuals shunt so much of their energy into flower production, they often don't have a lot left over for growing tall. I planted a wonderful annual cosmos called Memories of Mona, developed by Jeff McCormick, the founder of Southern Exposure seeds. It starts blooming very young, and very prolifically, and thus it never seems to have the energy reserves to reach the 5 or 6 foot height typical of wilder cosmos.
