Annual Flower Garden Ideas for Zone 7

Enlarge the Planting Bed

• Consider making the annual flower garden bed larger, to be at least 4 feet by 8 feet in size. This allows you to amend the garden soil in an expansive space for many plants, rather than having flowers scattered all about the property with limited access. Make the planting bed formal in a perfect rectangle or oval, or be more fluid and informal with a bed that is kidney-shaped or a gentle crescent. A large bed allows you to utilize taller plants such as cosmos, hollyhock or larkspur in the middle or back of the bed, with shorter annuals toward the front.

Use Sweeps of Color

• Many gardeners enjoy collecting annuals they love when they visit the garden center. A mish-mosh of many colors and sizes fills the planting area, looking like an English cottage garden. Rather than growing only one specimen of an annual flower, group multiples of the same favorite plant in the garden. Bob Polomski writes, in "Month-by-Month Gardening in the Carolinas," to group plants in threes, fives, or sevens, etc. to create a "natural, flowing look." This block of plants also increased visual impact, creating a sweep or mass of color and texture. Consider a swath of or carpet of petunias or pansies. Perhaps choose only three or four annual flowers for your garden, and then plant them in large numbers.

Plant in Containers

• Larger-size containers placed in your garden provide opportunities to grown and display annual flowers. Place the pots on your front steps or patio, or even set in the flower garden bed to create a focal point or add a vertical element to the design. Keep in mind containers' soil drains and dries out more quickly than the ground soil, so they may require more maintenance. If you own colorful glazed ceramic containers, use them like statuary. A tall cobalt blue urn that is surrounded by colorful annual flowers is dramatic. You don't have to plant flowers in an architecturally beautiful container---it becomes the focal point, and the annual flowers around it complement it.

Schedule Seasonal Change-Outs

• The mild winter temperatures in USDA zone 7 permit gardeners to still enjoy cool-season annual flowers after frosts and freezes return in mid-autumn. Pansy, ornamental kale, snapdragon, wallflower and calendula can be planted in fall, and allowed to blossom intermittently across winter and early spring. Once the danger of frost is past in mid-spring, warm-season flowers can be purchased and planted. Pull out those cool-season annuals by late spring (since they'll naturally fade as summer's heat intensifies) and plant any array of warm-season annuals in various colors, sizes and textures. Among popular warm-season types include petunia, wax begonia, wishbone flower, periwinkle, marigold, and impatiens.