Growing Your Start a Garden: Annual Cottage Garden
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Growing Your Start a Garden: Annual Cottage Garden
Your Start a Garden: Annual Cottage Garden contains 4 different annuals (plants that grow, flower, set seed, and die in a single season), 9 plants in all. They were selected to provide ease of care and vibrant color for many months. The plants in this collection all thrive in the same conditions: full sun (defined as 6+ hours of direct sun per day) and well-drained average soil. They will grow fast, flower profusely and die at the end of the growing season. Plants will arrive growing in pint pots that are easy to plant.
Although our horticultural team designed this collection to fill in the gaps and add colorful blooms between slower-to-establish perennial plants in the Start a Garden: Perennial Cottage Garden, you can also plant them with our other sun-loving collections or perennials of your choosing. Or, plant them to enhance an existing garden, arrange them together as a cutting garden, or simply enjoy as a colorful grouping of flowers that look good together while attracting butterflies, hummingbirds, and pollinating insects while remaining relatively unattractive to deer.
This guide includes the following sections:
- Gomphrena globosa ‘Ping Pong Purple’ (2 plants)
These multi-stemmed plants produce colorful, clover-like flower heads that are useful in both cut bouquets and dried arrangements. If you pinch plants back by ½ on arrival, you'll delay flowering, but the plants will produce more branches and thus more flowers over a longer season.
- Cleome hassleriana 'Violet Queen'
Trouble-free in full sun and average garden soil. Tolerates drought. In the South, cut plants back by at least ⅓ in late July or early August to produce fresh stems and new flower heads. Plants self-sow abundantly; expect an ample crop of seedlings next spring. Keep or relocate those you want and weed out the rest.
- Verbena bonariensis ‘Vanity’
These vigorous plants have been popular with southern gardeners for a long time. Their abundant blooms are unaffected by the kind of intense heat that leaves lesser plants gasping on the ground. Plants are long-blooming, flowering continuously from late spring into fall even without deadheading and will reliably self-sow if allowed to set seed in fall.
The flowers grow on wiry, well-branched stems that are excellent for cutting. Deadheading will keep the flowers coming all summer long and into fall. ‘Sonata White’ may or may not self sow, and seedlings that do appear the next year may be different.
The goal is to intersperse these fast-growing annuals amongst small young perennials without overwhelming them. The planting diagram that came with Start a Garden: Perennial Cottage Garden shows the perennials at their eventual mature size, with extra space purposely left for annuals to grow between.
Cleome will grow 3-4’ tall and grow to 24” wide in a season, so place those two plants behind the Phlox, alongside the Rose, where we have left ample space for it. We have also left a band of space between the taller back row (Rose, Phlox, Clematis, Digitalis) and the plants in front. The Gomphrena (8-10” wide, 16-20” tall), Cosmos (2’ tall, 12-16” wide) and Verbena (12-18” wide, 2-3’ tall) are interchangeable and can be arranged however you please. Since the Verbena has stiff upright stems without much foliage on them, it would work nicely next to the more billowy Geranium. Although we cannot guarantee that the perennials will bloom in their first season, if they do, placing the white-flowering Cosmos near the Alchemilla rather than by the Phlox (which blooms white) would create a nice sense of color balance. Have fun with this, you can’t go wrong.
To plant your Start a Garden: Annual Cottage Garden as a stand-alone garden, consult the back of each plant tag for spacing. All of the annuals we have chosen look good together and will grow well in any combination. Cleome, being far taller than the other plants, will look better to the rear of the planting with a “skirt” of lower annuals, or if the garden bed is seen from all sides, situate this tall plant in the center and arrange the others around it. Cosmos, with its feathery foliage makes a nice backdrop for the “pop” of brilliant purple Gomphrena globes. Group multiple plants of a single variety together for greater impact, or intermingle them for a more romantic look.
Light: Full sun.
Water: Although relatively drought tolerant, it's best to water deeply when the top 1” of soil is dry. Water soil at the base of plants rather than sprinkling the plants to help keep the leaves dry.
Fertilizer/Soil and pH: Plant in average garden soil that drains well. Apply an all-purpose or bloom-boosting fertilizer (such as 15-30-15 or another formula with a higher middle number) at the base of these annuals during the growing season, mixed according to the manufacturer's recommendations. If you are intermingling these annuals with young perennial plants, avoid fertilizing the perennials. Mulch lightly around plants to suppress weeds and retain soil moisture during the growing season, but pull some away if you wish to encourage self-sowing.
Pests/Diseases: These plants were selected because they are relatively trouble-free. Provide good air circulation to keep potential fungal diseases at bay.
Care During the Growing Season
We encourage you to cut these flowers for bouquets. This fosters dense branching and even more flowers, so enjoy your annuals both in the garden and indoors. Deadhead (remove spent flowers) to encourage further branching and bloom, as flowers pass by. When planting amongst young perennial plants, if any of these annuals crowd or begin to cast shade over the smaller perennials, it’s time to make a nice big bouquet to decrease their size.
End of Season Care
If you wish to encourage self-sowing in picturesque cottage garden fashion, discontinue deadheading as cold weather approaches so that seeds can ripen, and scratch away some mulch to allow patches of bare soil. After frost kills these plants, simply cut them off at the base. Ripe seeds can be collected and deliberately planted or simply strewn about.
To learn more, see our Expert Resources for New Gardeners.
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