One of the best ways to get quick colour into your garden is with flowering annuals. Modern forms of annual plants have been bred and selected for improved colour ranges, flower variation and disease resistance. In our mild climates many short-lived perennials and biennials are grown as annuals.
Favourites because of their long-flowering habit and their profusion of blooms, petunias are often regarded as symbols of summer.
Sunflowers are easily grown from seed and are beloved by children. Almost every part of the plant can be eaten, so they're useful as well as good-looking!
Also called marmalade daisies, rudbeckias are native to North America. Masses of bright orange-yellow blooms reflect the warm colours of summer.
Phlox will grow rapidly to blooming stage. If sown direct where it is to grow, it will produce a mass of (inexpensive) summer colour.
Sun loving Californian poppies have satiny-sheened petals in shades of white, cream, pink, yellow, orange and scarlet. These warm colours contrast with the blue-grey, ferny foliage. Sow seed direct into prepared garden beds.
This information is from the Yates Garden Guide: fully revised & updated 44th edition, HarperCollins, $39.99. You can have this information and so much more at your fingertips by purchasing the Yates Garden Guide, available at all leading bookstores and Bunnings stores.
