Annuals are a large group of plants that complete their life cycle in one season.  They are the longest blooming of the plant categories, and as such, are essential elements in most landscapes.

We all use annuals in one way or another.  We have all seen the beautiful tapestries done with begonias at some office buildings and shopping centers.  Impatiens and petunias are used widely, and with good reason.  They fill in quickly, are reliable bloomers and put on a summer-long show.

Many annuals can be raised easily from seed, but buying them in flats is a faster way to achieve the effect you want in the end.  This gets expensive, however.  What I do every year to offset the cost is buy a flat of annuals (such as impatiens), with every color that I want in the garden.  I plant them, then fill the flats back up with soil and take cuttings off the originals and root them.  If kept in a moist, dark shade area, within a few weeks you have a free flat of healthy impatiens.  Many of the annuals are conducive to this, and the original lopping actually helps the parent plant to become bushier.  For more information on cuttings, please see the Propagation pages.

Most annuals make wonderful container plants - either grouped or as single specimens.  They are essentials in many perennial gardens as fillers for bare spaces, or as masks for the declining foliage of their perennial neighbors.  Massed, they  can and do provide color and form throughout the entire growing season. 

Annuals come in sizes ranging from small border type plants to 8 foot giants, and many self seed readily, providing the gardener with a free bonus year after year.  There are both cold weather and hot weather varieties to choose from, making it easy to change a walkway border or container for a different look every season.  

For in-depth on information on some popular individual annuals, including their alternative uses, please see the links to the left.  Many more will be added soon, so do Bookmark, as pages are added to this site daily.

As a note, in some cases, individual annuals may also grow as biennials and perennials, especially in the south.  In cases where this is well-known, I have listed them in multiple categories so they will not be overlooked.  This is a large website, and it is very difficult to cross-reference everything and still have room for the subject matter.  I have done my best, but do not forget about the backspace buttons if you find yourself in an unintended category.