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Seasonal Progressions of Blooms
Season-by-Season Flowers
Experienced gardeners make sure to plant some flowers in their yards that will bloom during each of the three gardening seasons: spring, summer, and autumn. They plant flower successions in their beds, borders and outdoor containers.
Choose the succession-of-flowers method of planting. As the first blooms die back, another flower species grows into its space and starts its own, later blooming period.
Use the magic of flower successions to extend color in your yard and landscape from early spring until late fall.
For simplicity’s sake, let’s use a bed of annual flowers as our example.
A planting of zinnias will look attractive while the weather is warm, but they’ll slow down and die at first sign of frost. For a garden that blooms from spring through autumn, plant a variety of annuals to will work like a tag team.
That way, you’ll have months of nonstop blossoms. All it takes is a little planning.
The trick is to make sure that some of the plants in your garden are getting ready to bloom just as others are fading.
It’s really easy. Just follow your planting of cool-season, spring-blooming annuals with a planting of warm-season varieties.
Then, in mid-summer, when you’re removing the spent spring flowers, plant another cool-season planting to last well into autumn.
If you are more spontaneous, he easiest way to accomplish successive plantings is to replace spent plants with transplants of later-blooming types. But there’s a problem to overcome.
Oftentimes, garden centers stock flowering plants heavily in the spring and autumn, but let their inventory dwindle in the summer. The answer lies is planting seeds as you replace your spring flowers.
You also can do a series of direct sowings.
Whichever method you choose, make sure to sow or transplant at the right time. If you delay planting cool-season wallflowers until the weather is hot, they will bloom for only a short time (or never develop flowers at all).
By the same token, avoid planting warm-season flowers such as zinnias when the soil is too cold.
As a rule, cool-season annuals can be sown a month or so before the last frost in your area. That gives them time to germinate and be well underway by the time you plant warm-season varieties 2–3 weeks after the last frost.
For a truly long-blooming garden, start flowers indoors about two months before your last frost date.
Though annuals get a late start in cool northern climates, they make up for it quickly by flowering profusely in summer’s long daylight hours.
Those who live in mild-winter climates can enjoy flowers nearly year-round. Plant cool-season annuals in autumn for winter blooms. When they begin to flag, replace them with warm-season annuals followed by a planting of heat-resistant varieties for summer.
When autumn begins, renew the cycle by planting cool-season annuals again.
Planning Sequences with Annual Flowers
Annual flowers grown from seed will grow plants with flowers that reach the same point of development all at the same time. Many annual species bloom for more than one season, so using annuals in flowering successions is a good way to time blooms for occasions or seasonal events.
Most annuals also prefer to grow from seed sown directly in garden soils, and some species are easy to transplant from sprouts started indoors with seed [see: Flower Plant Lifecycles].
Plant annuals at the proper time to produce blooms for your flower bed’s progression of sequential blooms. Make sure they have enough time to grow and become established before temperatures climb above 90°F (32°C), or frosts will begin and it will become too cold for them to survive.
Species Weeks to Bloom Bloom Seasons
Alyssum 8 Spring–Autumn
Bachelor’s Button 10 Spring–Autumn
Calendula 8 Spring–Autumn
Candytuft 10 Spring–Autumn
Cosmos 8 Early Spring–Autumn
Marigold 8 Early Summer–Autumn
Moss Rose 8 Early Summer–Late Autumn
Nasturtium 6 Early Summer–Autumn
Nicotiana 8 Summer–Autumn
Phlox 10 Summer–Autumn
Pink 6–8 Spring–Summer
Sage 8–10 Spring–Autumn
Sunflower 8 Summer–Autumn
Woolflower 8 Spring–Autumn
Zinnia 8 Early Summer–Autumn
Step-By-Step Instructions
Plan flower successions by charting the season of bloom for each plant you intend to include in your flower garden’s bed. By double or triple planting areas of your garden, it’s possible to have a continual succession of blooms.
A simple plant-succession chart will contain vertical columns, one for each month of your region’s garden season, and rows for each flower you’ll plant.
Mark the seed-starting and transplant points of each flower, allowing time for the plants to grow and reach their bloom season. Then shade in the bloom colors for the flowering period by using colored pencils or markers to fill in columns of months for each plant’s row.
Gather graph paper, colored pencils, tracing paper, and plant information, then plan your flower successions by following these simple steps:
How to Plan a Flower Succession
On graph paper, label columns with the names of the months of your region’s gardening season, leaving space on the left for names of your selected plants.
Choose the first plant, noting its bloom color and season, and write it’s name on the left space of the top row.
Fill out the rows, noting the common, botanical, and cultivar or variety names of each plant.
Also record each plant’s height, width, and spacing needs.
Select a colored pencil to match the bloom color.
Mark the planting date and transplant date for each plant.
Fill in a span of columns to match each plant’s bloom season.
If plants will be removed after their bloom, mark the end of bloom with and “X.”
Continue until you have a complete chart diagram for every plant.
Mark successions of early-, midseason-, and late-blooming plants with similar heights and colors.
Prepare tracing paper overlays to your garden plan for each planting throughout the garden season.
Match plant successions from the chart to the plan’s open spots in the bed where blooms will finish.
Spring into Summer
A Spring-to-Summer Flower Planting
This seasonal progression of blooms in a flower border begins in spring with blossoms of four different flowering plants.
By midsummer, the bed’s spring flowers have faded but new groups of summer-blooming flowers—planted at the same time as the first spring-blooming plants—have grown in to replace them.
Sequenced plantings such as this example are a great way to enjoy a continual flower display all through the gardening season.