What’s the best way to brighten up your garden? Add lots of annual flowers in the Spring! Here in Southern Ontario, the May holiday weekend is usually safe from frost - and go time for planting tender annuals!
At Eising Garden Centre, you’ll find a wide array of beautiful annual blooms. Here are ten of our sun-loving favourites to try.
Cosmos
With daisy-like blooms in radiant shades of pink, red, and pure white adorned with mellow yellow centres—Cosmos are irresistible. They're perfect planted along a fence or at the back of a border, where they can lean on a little support. Depending on the variety, Cosmos can grow anywhere from 12 to 80 inches tall!
Zinnia
Bold, structured, and bursting with colour, Zinnias bring serious wow factor. Their cheerful blooms come in red, green, orange, yellow, purple, pink, and white. Depending on the variety, Zinnias grow between 6 and 36 inches tall and spread about 12 inches wide.
Calendula
Decorative and useful, Calendulas are edible flowers with culinary and medicinal value. Their soothing, antiseptic properties make them popular beyond the garden. Calendula come in gorgeous, bright shades of copper, orange, gold, and yellow blooms and grow 10 to 24 inches tall.
Marigold
Tough and reliable, Marigolds handle heat and humidity with ease, thriving even in the driest parts of your garden. They offer a beautiful range of bloom types—from large, ruffled flowers to small, delicate blossoms—and a palette of cream, yellow, orange, red, and bi-colours. Depending on the variety, Marigolds can grow from 6 to 36 inches tall.
Amaranth
If you're after drama, Amaranth is your plant! Reaching heights of 3 to 5 feet, these bold beauties flaunt long, rope-like clusters of maroon or red flowers. While low-maintenance, Amaranths may need a bit of support to stay upright as they mature.
Portulaca
Perfect for hot, dry, and neglected spots, Portulacas deliver a brilliant show of colour with minimal effort. Their rose-like blooms come in vivid shades of red, pink, yellow, white, orange, and purple. Low-growing at just 4 to 8 inches tall, they're ideal for the front of borders, or alongside driveways, and patios.
Salvia
With tall spikes of bold purple, red, blue, pink, or white blooms, Salvias are garden standouts. Growing 8 to 24 inches tall and often blooming continuously, they quickly become must-haves for flower beds or large containers.
Geranium
Drought-tolerant and tough as nails, Geraniums have long been a gardener’s favourite. Regular deadheading (removing spent blooms) will reward you with non-stop flowers until frost. Their lush foliage and bright flowers—ranging from salmon, white, purple, violet, and orange to red and pink—also shine in mixed containers. Geraniums typically grow between 8 and 24 inches tall.
Petunia
It’s no surprise Petunias have remained beloved for generations. They grow quickly, bloom prolifically, and require little care. Available in mounding or trailing forms—and sometimes carrying a heavenly scent—Petunias are perfect for flower beds, hanging baskets, pots, or window boxes. Growing 6 to 18 inches tall, they come in white, yellow, pink, purple, red, bi-colours, and even black!
Dahlia
Dahlias can become a full-on passion project—and it’s easy to see why. Their breathtaking blooms come in a stunning range of sizes, shapes, and colours. While Dahlias can be a bit particular (they love rich, well-drained soil and plenty of water, but hate soggy conditions), they are absolutely worth the extra attention.
Sunshine + Food + Hydration = Success
All of these annuals thrive in full sun and will reward you with even more blooms when given consistent water and fertilizer.
Adding a continuous-release fertilizer to your soil at planting time—or feeding weekly with a balanced, water-soluble fertilizer—makes it easy to keep your garden thriving all summer long!
*TIP: Check our handy Plant Finder for more details! https://plants.eising.ca/11110015/
Does your front porch need a little pizzazz? Add a hanging basket—or three! Hanging baskets are an effortless way to add lots of colour to your garden or porch quickly and easily.
Why We Love Hanging Baskets
Hanging baskets are stunning in the summer and can elevate your backyard or front porch into a blooming oasis! It’s the perfect way to add colour at eye level and vertical elements to your space. They don’t require a lot of effort, provide blooms all season long, and they’ll attract pollinators to your yard! Hanging baskets are also very easy to install; with freestanding hooks you can place in your garden, or you can mount hooks to your fence. You can’t go wrong with hanging baskets, we promise!
There are so many colours available that you’ll have no problem picking something that suits your garden design. The most popular flowers are begonias, petunias, and calibrachoas in colours such as yellow, red, purple, pink, and more! While these blooms are gorgeous, some of them can be a little heavy, so keep your baskets protected from harsh winds, so the stems don’t snap.
Types of Outdoor Hanging Baskets
Depending on your preferences, there are a few types of hanging baskets out there. Of course, if you prefer one aesthetic over another, you can always transplant the basket you find at Eising Garden Centre to a custom planter that suits your garden.
- Fibre Baskets – a denser basket also held in a metal basket; this has a cleaner aesthetic than the moss but still has a natural-looking colour.
- Outdoor Plastic Baskets – for a classic shape that is clean and will complement the other pottery in your yard, select a plastic basket! You can even take off the hook at the end of the season and reuse the pot for future planting.
How to Care for Your Hanging Baskets
Taking care of outdoor hanging baskets is relatively easy as long as you remember to check on them a little more often than your other containers; they are more likely to dry out in the sun and wind and will need more frequent watering. As with most plants, watering thoroughly less often is better than watering infrequently and superficially. With outdoor hanging plants, you’ll want to water them once a day unless it’s rainy. If it’s a scorching day out, your basket may need water twice a day. We recommend watering your basket once the top of the soil is dry, and watering until water pours out the bottom. Be careful to avoid splashes on the foliage.
Hanging baskets benefit from fertilizer through the growing season, so top them up with a water-soluble fertilizer that promotes blooming, such as a 1:2:1 ratio, around the middle of summer. Make sure that your plant looks healthy and is hydrated before you introduce any fertilizer.
We also recommend rotating your outdoor baskets to spread that sunshine around. By rotating your plants, they’ll get more even sun and wind exposure, which will foster a healthier plant overall.
Trim your hanging basket to help keep its shape and get rid of any leggy stems, which will keep it looking full and lush through the season. Some flowers will need deadheading, such as geraniums and verbena, though not all; be sure to check the requirements of your specific varieties. If you need to deadhead your flowers, simply pinch off dead flowers after they start to fade to encourage more blooms.
At Eising Garden Centre, we have plenty of hanging baskets for sale that you can use to decorate your front patio, fences, and more. Come visit us in Norfolk County to see our vast selection of unique and beautiful baskets!