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21 Annual Flowers That Bloom All Summer

The sun is shining, the birds are singing, and it’s time to start thinking about garden planning! While perennials come back year after year, you also need a few annual flowers that bloom all summer. they may require a bit more work, but they’ll reward you with an abundance of flowers and color.

Summer flower garden

Annual Flowers That Bloom All Summer

Benefits of adding annual flowers to your garden

Wonder why you should add annual flowers if there’s more work to maintain them? There are some benefits that make it worth the extra effort:

  • bloom longer
  • flower quicker
  • easy to maintain
  • not overly expensive
  • come in a variety of colors

While some perennial flowers are grown like an annual, a true annual grows from a seed, blooms, bears seed, and dies all in one season to complete its life cycle.

Annuals have a bloom span that often lasts throughout the entire summer season. To get the most out of these beautiful blooms, the trick is to start in the late spring after the first frost and find annual flowers that bloom all summer.

Depending on the climate in your specific location, summer may bring extreme or mild temperatures. Annual flowers come in a variety of hardy, semi-hardy, and tender.

  • Hardy annuals tolerate cool temperatures and even freezing conditions and can be planted in the early spring or even in the late summer to bloom into late summer or the fall.
  • Semi-hardy annuals tolerate cool temperatures and moderate frost.
  • Tender annuals are going to thrive on warmer temperatures and do not tolerate cool weather making them a perfect summer flower choice.

Add a pop of color anywhere with beautiful annuals that are easy to grow and will provide a burst of color all summer long. Use summer annuals in flower beds and for borders of flower beds or vegetable gardens, in container gardens and hanging baskets, or as screens and hedges training them to grow on fences or trellises.

Some even make great cut flowers. I’m sure you can hardly wait to head to your local garden center. Let’s take a closer look at 22 annual flowers that will keep blooming even when the weather heats up.

Annual Summer Blooming Flowers

1. Sweet Peas

a basket full of sweet pea flowers

Add a bit of romance and sweetness to your landscape. What a sweet-sounding name for a flower that blooms from spring into summer. Enjoy the sweet flower heads. Some regions will even see blooms that last into the fall. Fill your summer garden with your choice of red, pink, blue, white, or lavender.

2. Sweet Alyssum

sweet alyssum in shades of lavender and purple

Carpet your yard with a fresh look of white flowers all summer long, or choose fancy names of summer colors like Royal Carpet, violet-purple, Bi-color Pink Stream, pink-purple, Easter Bonnet Deep Pink, pink, Purple Shades, Purple, or Wonderland Deep Rose as a nice ornamental plant.

3. Tuberous Begonias

Tuberous Begonias

Gain a fluff of color in your planter or flower bed. Technically, Tuberous Begonias are actually tender perennials. However, they are usually grown as annuals.

Upright varieties accent bedding plants beautifully with a variety of colors in yellow, red, pink, or white, while the pendulous begonias work great in hanging pots.

Plant in the spring by burying the bottom half of the tuber. As the flowers begin to fade, pick off the faded flowers. As fall approaches, taper back the watering when you notice the flower turning yellow.

4. Marigolds

French marigold flowers

Add splashes of yellow, white, red, or orange and create a border to keep pests out of your garden.

Marigolds are easy to care for and are very sturdy throughout the summer. They will require placement in full sunshine. Watch some grow to a few inches and others to a few feet tall.

5. Calibrachoas

stunning Calibrachoas flowers

Plant a little show flower as a showman in your garden bed with these Calibrachoas. They also work well in a planter, hanging basket, or window box.

Fill a beautiful hanging basket with these blue, purple, red, orange, white, pink, or yellow flowers that look like miniature petunias. Get creative by choosing a striped hybrid.

Calibrachoa can also be used for ground cover in small patches. These gorgeous flowers love full sunshine but tend to last even longer when given a bit of part shade in locations that tend to experience extremely hot summers.

6. Ageratum

Ageratum flowers

Add some dots of blue, white, violet, or pink in full sunshine or light shade as long as the soil drains easily. So long as your soil doesn’t become excessively moist, grow them in a flower bed, along borders, or in a container.

They even survive in poor soil. Enjoy these annuals that grow into a bushy green plant dotted with colorful blooms.

7. Scaevolas

Scaevola flowers

Let the bloom colors of this flower fan out over a garden gate, or in a container where they are allowed to bloom and trail.

Enjoy pops of pink, white, or blue. They also make a great addition to a butterfly garden as they draw the fluttering winged creatures for you to observe. They can handle full sun or light shade and tolerate summer heat as well as some amounts of drought.

8. Vincas

pink vinca flowers

Add a pop of pink, white, purple, or red color along borders, inside flower beds, or containers with these sturdy and strong options. Some claim Vinca means “invincible”.

Leave them alone in full sun, and water them frequently to enjoy their blooms all summer long. They absolutely love tons of sunshine. These are low-maintenance flowers that have the added bonus of drawing butterflies as well. They will cover your garden in colorful and tiny parasol-shaped flowers that look great starting in the early summer until fall. Choose pink, coral, magenta, lavender, or white.

These little beauties do well in window boxes or your choice of planters as well.

In some areas, they could become invasive, so check before you plant. If you planted them and now they are taking over your yard, here’s how to get rid of vincas, also known as periwinkle.

9. Zinnias

bright colored zinnia flowers

Like exploding fireworks of color throughout the garden, zinnias are easy to care for and provide a wide array of colors of pink, red, purple, orange, yellow, lavender, white, and green to choose from. The only color you will not find in Zinnias is blue.

Select from different types of zinnias, such as common, desert zinnia, or Zinnia Angustifolia. They thrive on sun and soil that is well-drained. They can even often tolerate drought.

10. Petunias

red and white petunias

Petunias offer brilliant and bright colors of purple, red, white, pink, yellow many and interesting pattern combinations. They are actually a tender perennial in some USDA Hardiness Zones 9-11, but many gardeners love to grow them as an annual.

Petunias tolerate heat quite nicely and bloom throughout the entire growing season. They do well in containers, flower beds, or to provide a lovely border of color.

Grow them best in full sun, though they also grow well in partial shade. Encourage more blooms as the flowers begin to fade by removing the parts that have faded (also known as deadheading).

11. Pentas

pink pentas

Place these beautiful colorful blooms in the sun, and they will thrive all summer long. Don’t be surprised if you see butterflies and hummingbirds flitting about in your garden since they attract both.

Choose from white, red, pink, purple, or lavender. They handle soil that is dry and do well in flower beds, along borders, or in containers. Maybe even accent a rock garden.

12. Portulaca

portulaca flowers in warm colors of yellow, orange, and red

Maybe you know these colorful annuals by the common name of moss rose flowers or purslane. They do really well in full sunshine and handle dry conditions. Put them in a tall container, let them cover the ground, or fill up a hanging basket which is great to accommodate their trailing stems.

Choose from white, pink, peach, yellow, orange, red, magenta, lavender, fuchsia, or purple.

13. Salvia

light purple salvia flowers

Choose from a wide range of colors of white, red, orange, pink, salmon, purple, or burgundy. These stately beauties love the heat and actually produce more blooms with a bright-colored flower when it is in the full sun.

They do require a lot of water, though. Butterflies and hummingbirds also love their blooms.

14. Penstemon

white penstemon

Plant them and almost forget them, but they’ll still thrive in beautiful colors of blue-violet, purple, red, pink, or white. Their flowers last for several weeks starting in the late spring and into the summer. They enjoy full sun or just a bit of shade.

15. Angelonia

pink angelonia

Fill your garden with these beauties, and you may feel as if they rise to attention when you tend to them. Enjoy this beautiful orchid-like flower all summer long.

The Angelonia pop up like tiny orchids and are very durable with their long stems. It is an all-weather flower that stands up to excessive heat or high wind and rain, but they need at least 6 to 8 hours of direct sunlight every day.

They look great along walkways or as borders to a flower bed. Some plant them alongside perennials, so when the other blooms of color fall off, the Angelonia is still providing a colorful accent among the greenery.

They also stand head and shoulders above the rest, providing a nice contrast to shorter blooms in a garden, or enjoy them in a window box or planter. An added perk is that they are not prone to diseases or insects, and they are even deer resistant. Select pink, mauve, blue, purple, or white.

16. Lobularia

Lobularia flowers

Plant a bit of cheer and watch it spread with sweet dots of white to form a nice blanket flower. Fill up a pot or a hanging basket, or let them spread out to grow from about 2 to 6 inches tall to about 12 inches wide.

The Lobularia is a very versatile flower. You will need to start them with a cutting, and they also make a great border when you let them spread.

17. Lantana

lantana flowers

Have a fiesta in your yard with this multicultural variety of sun-loving annual flowers. If you don’t feel like partying around the gorgeous colored blooms, butterflies are sure to flock around and throw a party. Hummingbirds may even join them.

Enjoy a swirl of colors: pinks, oranges, peach, Rose Sunrise, or Lucky Series Lavender, all in one flower.

Heads up, though! These create a citrus-like scent that some actually think is a bit smelly. They work fantastic in hanging pots or planters since they love to branch out and spill over the side.

18. Mandevilla

Mandevilla flowers

Turn your yard into a tropical paradise with pops of pink, red, and white. These tender perennials are usually grown as an annual to provide an all-summer tropical look to any landscape. Accent them alongside the greenery of a sweet potato vine. They are very low maintenance too.

Choose from climbing or clustering varieties. The climbing blooms grow a foot in just one week. They like to climb and cluster. Let them climb up a trellis or along a fence as vining plants. Pinch the growing tips to keep them healthy and bushy.

19. Geraniums

red geraniums

If you’ve ever been to Mackinac Island’s Grand Hotel, you will quickly recognize the majestic beauty of geraniums. Typically, recognized for their bright red color that gets noticed, they also come in white, pink, orange, and purple.

Most geraniums are actually perennials that are grown as annuals in cold winter climates. They love the full sun but also enjoy the afternoon shade in really hot environments. They do well in areas that have warm and dry days with cool nights and make great bedding or container plants.

20. Impatiens

 a carpet of impatients in multiple colors

Impatiens come in a couple of varieties such as Impatiens Walleriana and New Guinea Impatiens. The New Guinea variety has dramatic foliage and very bright flowers, and they do better in the full sun than Impatiens Walleriana.

Most Impatiens come in a soft pastel hue, but there are plenty of bright yellows or oranges as well as blue, purple, red, and white. They look great in mixed colors or in solid white.

The foliage is blue/green and is almost shrub-like. These little beauties are sometimes called busy Lizzie, and they make beautiful flowers as bedding plants or for container gardening. While it is technically a perennial plant, it is usually grown as an annual. Impatiens Walleriana requires shade or light that has been filtered.

Sunpatients, another type of inpatients, are hardy and not prone to insects or disease. As if their five petals are not enough beauty, they also attract butterflies with their nectar. Enjoy white, rose, salmon, orange, lavender, or red. They look great in a container, hanging basket, or in a flower bed.

21. Supertunia

striped pink and white supertunias

If you love petunias, you’ll love these special petunia hybrids that form a Supertunia. It was bred specifically to produce more large and beautiful blooms. These little beauties love to soak up the sun all day long. The more sun, the more blooms.

This is a great choice for dry or even drought conditions. They work really well in containers, planters, or window boxes. Supertunias come in almost any color or color combinations you could dream of.

21 annual flowers that bloom all summer
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Adriana Copaceanu is a passionate nature lover living in the country on her dream property where she grows vegetables, lavender, and wildflowers that she shares with the wildlife they attract. When she's not in the garden, she loves spending time with her chickens and planning her next nature project. Check out her books below:

How to Grow Lavender for Fun and Profit: Lessons Learned from Planting Three Hundred Lavender Plants

How to Raise Chickens for Eggs: A Guide to Raising Happy, Healthy Chickens for Nutritious, Organic Eggs at Home

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