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Tag: Flower

The Best Hanging Basket Bloomers for Shade

Pendulous tuberous begonias make exceptional hanging basket specimens.

Shaded porches and patios are prime spots for hanging baskets. We spend most of our outdoor leisure time in the shade where their beauty is most welcome, but only certain garden flowers will flower and thrive in less light.  Planting the right flowers is essential to keep your shaded baskets looking good from spring to fall.

Five Hanging Basket Planting Tips

  1. Plant in spacious hanging baskets with ample root space. I like coco-lined wire baskets within the 12- to 16-inch range. Be sure they are supported by secure hooks and strong chains.
  2. Choose a quality potting mix with good water-holding ability. We recommend Fafard® Professional Potting Mix (no added fertilizer) or Fafard® Ultra Container Mix with Extended Feed (added fertilizer and water-holding crystals)
  3. If your potting soil has no supplemental ingredients, consider adding Terra Sorb water-holding crystals and slow-release fertilizer to reduce the need to water and feed as often.
  4. Make sure a hose with a long water wand is nearby. (the Dramm professional water wand is my favorite.)
  5. Don’t overplant your baskets. Usually, one to three plants are enough, depending on what you are growing.

Best Hanging Basket Bloomers

1. Bacopa

Proven Winner’s Bacopa Snowstorm® Blue and Pink mingle with white-flowered Euphorbia in a combined basket. (Image thanks to Proven Winners)

Bacopa is most often sold as a container or hanging basket trailer, but the plants look lovely on their own in a basket or among other plants. I often choose the white-flowered MegaCopa™ White variety for my hanging baskets and pots, but Proven Winner’s Snowstorm® Blue  and Snowstorm® Rose are newer forms with an added burst of color. One warning for the wise, bacopa doesn’t show drought stress immediately. By the time you learn plants are stressed, they’ll have dropped all of their buds. Plants can take up to two weeks before flowering again, so be sure to water daily, especially in hot weather.

2. Begonias

San Francisco™  Bolivian begonia is a top-notch bloomer known to thrive in summer heat and humidity. (Image thanks to Proven Winners)

A host of specialty begonias are bred for hanging baskets. The trailing bloomers tend to have both attractive leaves and beautiful flowers. Some of the best performing include the Double Delight® begonias (check out Double Delight® Blush Rose) from Proven Winners in addition to their larger-flowered Belleconia™ tuberous hybrids.

Bolivian hybrids are also favorites of mine. The award-winning Rivulet® Bolivian begonia hybrids (blush, deep rose, orange, pink, and double red shades) from Ball Seed® have impressive flowers as does San Francisco™, with its pendulous salmon-pink flowers.

Impatiens

Simple, classic Impatiens look lovely in baskets through summer with regular water and fertilizer.

Classic Impatiens walleriana hybrids require regular water to look their best in hanging baskets, but they will reward you with nonstop flowers until frost. The double-flowered Rockapulco® varieties from Proven Winners have delicate rose-like blooms. Try Rockapulco®Tropical Shades with its profuse guava-pink flowers. Gardeners seeking single-flowered Imatiens should try the seed-grown Imara™ XDR Impatiens for their large flowers, vigor, and resistance to downy mildew, a common disease of the plants.

Fuchsia

 

Fuchsia ‘Dark Eyes’ is a lovely, easy-to-find trailing variety for hanging baskets.

Trailing Fuchsias are ideal hanging basket specimens tolerant of full sunlight but generally happier in full to partial shade. There are hundreds of varieties available in different color combinations–mostly in whites, reds, pinks, and purples. The flowers often have two or more colors, with top petals (actually sepals) in one color, the true inner petals in another shade, and the floral pistil and stamens in yet another color. The dark purple and fuchsia ‘Dark Eyes‘ is an exceptional garden variety as is the white and red ‘Swingtime‘. Fuchsia flowers attract hummingbirds, so place them where you can see both the flowers and possible hummingbird visitors.

Browallia

Loads of Fun is a container garden recipe from Proven Winners containing Browallia Endless™ Illumination, Rockapulco® Rose impatiens, and Torenia Catalina® Pink. (Image thanks to Proven Winners)

Browallia

The first time I grew Browallia in the late 1990s, I was impressed by its beautiful flowers and long season of bloom. The tough plants grow beautifully in hot summer weather and prosper in shaded hanging baskets. The most common variety is the violet-blue-flowered Endless™ Illumination Bush Violet from Proven Winners. The plants are real garden workhorses. Give them regular water and they will keep flowering until frost without the need to deadhead!

Wishbone Flower

Summer Wave® Trailing Large Blue Torenia is a pretty blue-flowered form to look for at your local garden center.

Trailing or bushy Torenia look beautiful in baskets and are adapted to shade. Summer Wave® Torenias are the standbys and available in lavender-pink, purple, and blue forms. They trail to 12-16 inches with strong, vigorous growth. Varieties in the Catalina® series are a more bushy counterpart reaching 12 x 12 inches. Yellow, white, pink, and purple forms are available. For me, the prettiest of the bunch is Catalina® Grape-o-licious™ with its white flowers with royal purple centers.

Garden Perennials That Don’t Stop Blooming

As flowering plants, most perennials are a mixed blessing. To their credit, they produce some of the garden’s signature blooms, on plants that return reliably year after year. What would spring be without primroses and trilliums, or summer without bee-balm and black-eyed Susans, or fall without asters and Japanese anemones?

Seasonality of bloom does have its downside, however. Many perennials are as fleeting as they are beautiful, flowering for a mere 2 or 3 weeks. Many – but not all. Here are some of our favorite perennials that depart from the norm by blooming for 3 months (or more) rather than the typical 3 weeks. Most will.

Nonstop Flowering Perennials

Yellow Fumitory (Corydalis lutea, aka Pseudofumaria lutea)

The bright yellow flowers and delicate blue-green leaves of this fumatory bring season-long color to gardens.

Few shade-loving plants of any type flower as brightly and as tirelessly as this somewhat short-lived perennial from mountains of central Europe. The golden-yellow, sharks-head-shaped flowers occur on mounded, ferny-leaved, foot-tall plants from mid-spring to fall, with barely a pause. Plants often generously self-sow, assisted by ants that distribute the seeds. Not to worry: unwanted seedlings are easily pulled – but you’ll likely want to keep all or most of them. Yellow fumitory is a perfect fit for shady cottage gardens and other semi-informal settings, mixed with celandine poppies (Stylophorum diphyllum), creeping phlox (Phlox stolonifera), ferns, hostas, zigzag goldendrod (Solidago flexicaulis), and the like.  USDA hardiness zones: 5 to 8

Kenilworth Ivy (Cymbalaria muralis)

The ever-flowering Kenilworth ivy grows beautifully along rock walls and between paving stones.

Another shade-loving European native, Cymbalaria muralis does indeed resemble a miniature ivy in its lobed near-evergreen leaves and its clambering growth. Its small blue snapdragon-like flowers depart completely from the ivy model, however. The trailing plants grow best in well-drained soil, quickly covering the ground or a wall, and flowering happily from early spring to late summer. Plants can become a nuisance in favorable climates, so use with caution in areas such as the Pacific Northwest. The similar Cymbalaria pallida spreads less vigorously, forming condensed mats spangled with mid-blue flowers (or white, in the case of ‘Albiflora’). Both are hardy from zones 5 to 8.

Geranium ‘Rozanne’

‘Rozanne’ forms attractive mounds and blooms effortlessly through summer.

Few perennials flower as unceasingly as this hybrid geranium. Happy in full sun to light shade, it produces violet-blue saucer-flowers from late spring through summer on lax continually lengthening stems. You can shear plants to a few inches from the ground in midsummer to keep them more compact and to stimulate more prolific late-season bloom. The 2008 winner of the Perennial Plant Association’s Perennial of the Year award, ‘Rozanne’ has become immensely (and ubiquitously) popular throughout its USDA zone 5 to 8 hardiness range. (True Geranium are distinct from florists’ “geraniums”, which actually belong to the genus Pelargonium).

Corsican Violet (Viola corsica)

Corsican violets and delicate year-long bloomers.

Small in stature but unsurpassed in flower power, Corsican violet blooms continuously year-round, pausing only during sub-freezing winter spells. The violet-blue, white-eyed flowers lift their faces to the sun atop low semi-trailing stems that ultimately extend to 5 or 6 inches. Give this delightful little urchin a place in a sunny well-drained garden niche in its Zone 5 to 10 hardiness range and it will give you virtually endless delight. If you leave a few seedheads you’ll also get a few volunteer plants to spread the cheer.

Lavender (Lavandula hybrids)

Some lavender varieties will bloom from June to early October.

While technically a dwarf shrub, lavender functions as a herbaceous perennial in cold-winter areas of the U.S., where it typically flowers from late spring until late summer. Some lavender varieties take it a few weeks further, blooming into early fall. Among the best of these floriferous selections are 2-foot-tall ‘Royal Velvet’ and the 10-inch dwarf ‘Super Blue’. Also well worth seeking out are hardy hybrids between common lavender and Lavandula latifolia (known collectively as lavandin or Lavandula × intermedia). The lavandin cultivar ‘Phenomenal’ earns its name by producing numerous 2-foot lavender-blue spires on hardy silver-leaved plants from June to early October. It shares common lavender’s Zone 5 hardiness, given a sunny well-drained niche.

Dalmatian Toadflax (Linaria dalmatica)

The non-invasive Dalmatian toadflax is drought-tolerant and blooms endlessly.

Don’t be deceived by the superficial resemblance to the weedy Linaria vulgaris, aka butter and eggs. This is a totally different toadflax, forming non-spreading clumps of 30-inch stems furnished with attractive blue-green foliage and topped from early summer to frost with spikes of lemon-yellow snapdragons. A beautiful drought-tolerant thing, it prospers in hot sunny well-drained garden habitats in zones 4 to 9, self-sowing moderately where happy. It can be a bit too happy in parts of the Western U.S., so check your state’s invasive-plant list.

Phlox ‘Solar Flare’

A hybrid between two native phlox species, ‘Solar Flare’ bears pink-eyed flowers in flushes from spring to fall.

A hybrid of the eastern U.S. native Phlox carolina, this disease-resistant cultivar opens its white, pink-eyed flowers in late spring, weeks before those of garden phlox (Phlox paniculata). It follows with repeated flushes throughout summer and into fall, provided it’s regularly deadheaded. Other laudable features include a compact habit (2 feet tall and 1 foot wide) and exceptional disease resistance. It’s a reliable performer in full sun to light shade in zones 4 to 8. Apply an inch of Fafard organic compost in spring and your ‘Solar Flare’ will be especially dazzling.

Daisy Mae Mongolian Daisy (Kalimeris integrifolia ‘Daisy Mae’)

Clouds of little white yellow-eyed daisies adorn the 2-foot, clumping stems of ‘Daisy Mae’ from early summer until frost. Full to part sun and well-drained soil are all it requires. Use it in borders and containers, perhaps in combination with other sun-loving, drought-tolerant perennials such as winecups (Callirhoe involucrata) and balloon flower (Platycodon grandiflorus). Hardy from zones 5 to 9.

Gaura (Oenothera lindheimeri)

The prairie-native, Gaura, blooms nonstop and is a butterfly favorite.

Also known as Gaura lindheimeri, this prairie native keeps on blooming through heat and drought from early July to frost. The butterfly-shaped blooms are arrayed along wiry 3-foot wands that toss in the summer breeze. Typically white-flowered (as in the excellent variety ‘Whirling Butterflies), it also comes in pink forms (including ‘Pink Cloud’ and ‘Siskyou Pink’). Given a porous soil in full sun, it will reliably winter from zones 5 to 9.