Fabulous Summer Flowers

There here are two ways to keep the color going in your garden through the summer..

- Marisa Reyes

First, choose a variety of annuals that bloom from the moment you set the seedlings in the ground until frost (the combo at right is a great example of this technique). Second, plant combinations of perennials that bloom at different times. Meet some good candidates for early and late summer on the next pages. Choose one or two of these combos or grow them all in different spots in your garden to guarantee that you (and visiting pollinators) will have plenty of blooms to enjoy from the time the weather warms up until the cold shuts everything down in fall.

Show-Stopping Annuals

It's never too late to grab a few annuals at the garden center and pop them in the ground, where they'll splash color across your garden until frost. Long-blooming, easy-care zinnias, salvias and marigolds offer so many different colors that you can have a lot of fun creating combinations. Plus, the mounding, draping habit of hakonechloa makes a perfect front-of-the-border plant and frames its companions beautifully. Regularly deadheading zinnia, salvia and marigolds encourages new blooms and keeps plants looking tidy.

A Canna Canna spp. and hybrids

Tender perennial; red, orange, yellow, pink, white or salmon flowers in summer; full sun; 2 to 8 ft. tall, 1 to 4 ft. wide; cold hardy in USDA zones 7 to 11

B Zinnia Zinnia elegans State Fair Mix