Summer Flowers That Come Back Year After Year

Perennials

• Perennial plants are know to be planted once to return year after year, usually becoming bigger and better. The same holds true for flowering perennials. It is important you select flowering perennial plants that will grow well in the chosen planting location and are suitable for the U.S. Department of Agriculture plant hardiness zone you live in. Frequently planted flowering perennials that have varieties for most USDA zones are chrysanthemums, daisies, lilies, roses and lavender.

Annuals

• By its name, flowering plants classified as an annual are assumed to grow and die during a single growing season, and must be manually replanted every year. In USDA hardiness zones 9 to 11 many annuals can be grown like perennials. In colder zones, at the end of the summer growing season, you can let your annual flower heads die on the plant so the flower head produces seeds that will fall to the ground. Those seeds will germinate the following summer to produce new flowering plants. Self-seeding annuals that are known to re-appear the following year are zinnias, cosmos, coreopsis, bachelor buttons, marigolds, sweet Williams, snapdragons and nigella.

Wildflowers

• If you decide to add blooming wildflowers to your landscape or garden, be sure to select wildflowers that are native or adaptable to your area and region. By choosing wildflowers that would naturally grow in your locale, the plants, like self-seeding annuals, will, year after year, re-seed and re-appear to flower again. Because wildflowers can self seed so prolifically, where you plant them originally may become overrun with the plants, or an area larger than you had planned will soon be sprouting the flowers. Wildflowers are ideal for an area that requires low maintenance and that you want to naturalize with a rainbow of color every year.