As the garden wakes up in the spring, many annuals are already in bloom and ready to provide flowers for bare spots in the garden. Like paint for the landscape artist, we can use them to bring color and fragrance wherever we choose. Whether in containers, between perennials, or in a mass together, these springtime annuals are a gift for any garden!
Spring Annuals for a Chicagoland Garden
Pansy
One of the queens of the cool season, pansies are hardy spring annuals that bring bright personality into your beds. They’re famous for their heart-shaped, multi-colored blooms that come in combos of yellow, purple, burgundy, pink, violet, and more!
The black markings in the center of the petals give them a strong personality, like smiling faces looking up from your garden. They grow low to the ground and tolerate frost, making them an ideal cool season annual.
Sweet Alyssum
Another cold season annual, Sweet Alyssum brings a smorgasbord of tiny white or purple flowers to your beds in the spring. They’re also ideal annuals for a container or hanging basket, where they’ll beautifully spill over the edge.
Besides color, they bring a sweet honey fragrance to the garden, attracting and nourishing pollinators who are waking up from hibernation. They bloom in the spring before fading in the summer and blooming once again in the fall.
Petunia
Among all of the garden annuals, the petunia is one of the most cherished, and for good reasons. Their bright, trumpet-shaped flowers bloom in a never-ending display from spring to fall. They bring pink, purple, yellow, orange, red, black, or white flowers into your garden with leaves that can spill over the edge of a pot or form an attractive mound close to the ground.
Although cold-tolerant, they are frost-sensitive, which means you should wait until after the last frost date before planting them.
Calibrachoa
Also called Million Bells, calibrachoa is a trailing annual that blooms in a riot of color from spring to fall. You can find the bright, one-inch flowers in a wide spectrum of white, coral, pink, yellow, red, indigo, violet, multicolor, and more.
Like Sweet Alyssum, they’re another well-loved “spiller” for containers and hanging baskets. Calibrachoa tolerate a mild frost and are fairly resistant to heat and drought too.
Dianthus
Also known as “Pinks,” dianthus feature attractive grass-like foliage and bright flowers. Grown together in clumps, they create a stunning wildflower effect. True to their name, the flowers display radiant hues of magenta, fuchsia, rouge, or white with pink fringes.
Besides the bright colors, they also exude a pleasing clove-like fragrance which you can enjoy by planting them near the front of your flower borders.
Dusty Miller
In contrast to the brightly-colored flowers of many annuals, dusty miller brings exquisite silver foliage to the garden. You don’t have to wait for them to bloom or worry whether they will bloom again.
The silver leaves add zest to the spring garden as soon as you plant them, and continue to offer color contrasts throughout the whole season.
Marigold
Marigolds bring the colors of the sunrise into your garden with fiery yellow, orange, and red blossoms. They’re known for their low-maintenance and pest-free lifestyle. Blooming all season long, they’re not only beautiful plants, but also plants with purpose.
Their unique fragrance, which smells sweet to us, wards off pests from the other plants around them. For that reason, gardeners often grow them as companions in the vegetable garden.
What is the Most Popular Annual Flower in Chicagoland?
Petunias are one of the most popular annual flowers. Their reliable and attractive blooms have captured the heart of gardeners for decades. With that said, even though other annuals are not as popular as petunias, they still have much to offer with their unique leaves, flowers, habits, and scents.
When the risk of frost finally clears, and the garden begins to grow, annuals add immediate color to your beds. Blooming throughout the spring, and often into the summer, they fill your garden with color, scent, and attractive foliage. Savvy gardeners take advantage of the versatility and variety of annuals to embellish their front steps, hanging baskets, flower borders, and vegetable plots.
To see our selection of spring annuals for your garden, come visit our Garden Centers in Bloomingdale and Carpentersville!