Product Details
Are you new to gardening? Would you like to start a garden? Our Start a Garden: Annual Cottage Garden was designed by our horticultural team to fill in the gaps and add colorful blooms between slower-to-establish plants in our Start a Garden: Perennial Cottage Garden. You can also plant these annuals as a separate cutting garden or they can be planted within an existing garden to enlarge and enhance and it. Aside from offering a colorful grouping of flowers that look good together, plants will attract butterflies, hummingbirds, and pollinating insects. This collection contains 4 different annuals (plants that grow, flower, set seed, and die in a single season). They were selected to provide ease of care and vibrant color for many months. The plants in this garden all thrive in the same conditions: full sun (defined as 6+ hours of direct sun per day) and well-drained soil. Quantities of each plant variety listed below, 9 plants total. If planted on its own, this collection will cover 12-15 square feet.
- 2 Gomphrena globosa 'Ping Pong Purple' (Globe Amaranth)
- 2 Cleome hassleriana 'Violet Queen' (Spider Flower)
- 2 Verbena bonariensis Vanity (PP 33,791)
- 3 Cosmos bipinnatus 'Sonata White'
What can you expect?
Small ball-shaped blossoms in a rich, eye-catching shade of purple arrive in abundance on Gomphrena globosa 'Ping Pong Purple,' a low-maintenance, drought-tolerant plant. It adds lively color and a distinctive silhouette to containers and garden beds. Plant en masse at the edge of the border or allow it to mix and mingle with other annuals. A terrific cut flower and great for drying. Grows 8-10" wide x 16-20" tall.
Cleome hassleriana 'Violet Queen' displays a non-fading shade of violet that is striking in a cottage garden, annual bed, or spotted into a mixed border. ‘Violet Queen' holds its 5–6" flower clusters and narrow seed pods aloft on sturdy, 3-4' stems that will create a focal point in the back of a border all summer. Their airy effect also makes them useful as fillers among plants of similar heights, such as Dahlias. Spider Flowers are an heirloom often seen in cottage gardens. A native of South America, Cleome thrives in ordinary soil and full sun, with little care. The blooms will attract beneficial insects to your garden, and you'll enjoy cutting some stems for bouquets. Grows about 24" wide x 3-4' tall.
Small space and container gardeners, meet the compact, award-winning Verbena bonariensis Vanity, a selection of the airy, pollinator-attracting Verbena bonariensis. Vanity grows to just 2-3' in height, making it ideal for gardens of all sizes, including small ones. The straight stems resist flopping, and their uniform height creates drifts of fragrant, densely packed flower clusters that are a brighter purple than those produced by their relative. Plants are deer-resistant and tolerant of heat and drought, and they feed and support pollinators from midsummer to hard frost. No deadheading is required to keep the flowers coming. Plants self-seed in a site they like. Great for containers, and for cutting, too. Grows 12-18" wide x 2-3' tall.
The pure white, Daisy-like blooms of Cosmos bipinnatus 'Sonata White' are held atop wiry stems above delicate, feathery foliage on compact, bushy plants. Great for cutting from summer to fall. Winner of the coveted Fleuroselect Gold Medal. Grows 12-16" wide x 2' tall.
Enjoy a garden of beautiful, full-sun annual favorites. We hope it’s the start of many great gardening adventures.
Visit the Growing Guide (see tab above) to learn more now or consult the Quick Start Guide you will receive when your new garden arrives.
Shipping
HOW PLANTS ARE SHIPPED
The size of the plants we ship has been selected to reduce the shock of transplanting. For some, this means a large, bareroot crown. Others cannot travel bareroot or transplant best if grown in containers. We ship these perennials and annuals in 1 pint pots, except as noted. We must point out that many perennials will not bloom the first year after planting, but will the following year, amply rewarding your patience. We ship bulbs as dormant, bare bulbs, sometimes with some wood shavings or moss. Shrubs, Roses, vines, and other woody plants may be shipped bareroot or in pots. The size of the pot is noted in the quick facts for each item.
WHEN WE SHIP
We ship our bulbs and plants at the right time for planting in your area, except as noted, with orders dispatched on a first-come, first-served basis by climate zone. We also ship a wide range of containers and planters, tools, supplies, fertilizers, garden wear, garden decor items, as well as indoor decorations like wreaths and dried bouquets when available. Estimated dates for shipping are indicated in the green Shipping Details box for each item. Please supply a street address for delivery. Kindly contact us with two weeks notice, if you'll be away at the expected time of delivery.
OUR GUARANTEE
We guarantee to ship plants that are in prime condition for growing. If your order is damaged or fails to meet your expectations, we will cheerfully replace or refund it. Please contact our Customer Service Department at 1-800-503-9624 or email us at [email protected]. Please include your order number or customer number when contacting us.
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Growing guide
Welcome to the world of gardening & our Start a Garden series
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.
To download a PDF of our New Gardener's Handbook, click here.
To download a PDF of our Glossary of gardening words, click here.
