Filling Your Garden with Annually Blooming Flowers During the Springtime

Maintaining an attractive springtime garden gives you the ability to experiment with both annual and perennial plants. Unlike perennials, which come back every year, annual flowers must be replanted each growing season. This gives experienced and novice gardeners the opportunity to discover the numerous types of flora and foliage that thrive throughout the spring season. Spring annual flowers vary greatly in scent, color, texture and environmental requirements. Knowing about some of them offers you the information you need to add some of these ornamental flowers to your landscape environment.

Globe Amaranth

A late-spring blooming flower, globe amaranth decorates bordered flower beds with dense, deep green foliage. The tiny, frilly flowers of globe amaranth burst from the foliage in colors of pink, fuchsia and purple. It's a low-growing yet stout annual. Globe amaranth is drought tolerant and prefers partial sunlight. Soil conditions should be loamy and well-drained.

Baby's Breath

Baby's breath, an annual spring flower, is often found as a filler in floral bouquets. In gardens it grows quickly, producing several thin, wispy branches that feature the tiny puffy flowers. The flowers of baby's breath vary from white to light pink and other bold colors like magenta and purple. Baby's breath prefers moist soil, mulch and direct sunlight during the spring. It thrives in temperate climates in hardiness zones 3 through 9.

Pansy

Pansies, or pansy violets, are delicate annual flowers that bloom in the cool, rainy seasons of temperate climates. These showy, colorful flowers can be found in cottage gardens and throughout fields after the rain during the springtime. Pansies prefer moist, black soil. Add mulch to keep moisture from evaporating quickly. Partial shade keeps their velvety, plump petals from drying out in the hot sun. The colors of pansy petals vary from white and yellow to shades of pink, purple and brown. Hybrid varieties exist that display patterns on the petals.

Mexican Zinnia

A bushy, upright growing annual flower, the Mexican zinnia thrives throughout growing zones 3 through 10. It prefers direct sunlight and blooms from early spring, through summer and until the first frost of the cold season. This hardy flower is native to Mexico, as the name denotes, and prefers well-drained soil. The North Carolina State University recommends that Mexican zinnia be watered before late in the afternoon and to give the plant good circulation. A well-aerated commercial garden soil provides nutrition and circulation for this plant. It is very drought tolerant and is also pest-resistant. The flowers of Mexican zinnia vary from white to shades of goldenrod, orange and fiery red with spring-green foliage.