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Full Sun Annual ColorLandscape color that can take the heat. |
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Transcript: Full Sun Annual Color
When the weather heats up in summer, it just provides other ways to get great annual color in our landscape. Let’s talk about a few good ideas today.A good plant is Gomphrena or Globe Amaranth. They come in various shades from lavender to reddish-violet all the way into white. And they look as good dry as they do live. These make great little dried flowers as well.
Zinnias are a great plant. They look really good in beautiful colors. One of my favorite Zinnias is the species Zinnia or Zinnia Linearis, also called Narrow Leaf Zinnia due to the foliage. It comes in orange, gold, yellow, and even a white form. These are beautiful plants that just keep going through the heat and they’re virtually disease and pest free. This is a good one to last you all the way to frost.
Among the succulents, we have Portulaca and Purslane. It never gets too hot for these. They don’t require a lot of water, either, which is a good extra feature. The blooms last a day and close up and more blooms come to follow. A good tidy plant. Again, good for a ground cover area in the bright sun or for a hanging basket or container.
Vincas or Periwinkles have been around for many years. Just keep them a little on the dry side. If you over water them, you can run into some problems, but in a landscape with just slight moisture, they do well and go all summer long.
And then there’s the annual Salvias. This red one is called Lady in Red. It’s one of our annual forms of Salvia. Actually, it’s natives are relative in east Texas and they do well throughout the state. It will put up with full sun, but also with a little bit of shade and it comes in a pink and a white form as well.
So choose some of these heat-tough annuals for your summer landscape. With your common-sense tip for hot weather annual color, I’m Skip Richter.
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Last Updated:
July 6, 2006