6 Things: Late Summer Annuals to Add Color to Your Garden

When summer stalls in late August and your perennials start looking worn, stretched, faded, and without flowers, it’s time to add some late summer annuals to give your garden beds a boost. We chatted with Kerry Ann M. from our greengoods team to learn which six annuals she suggests scooping up to enliven planters before fall mums season starts. Bonus: Each of these annuals fluidly combine with your favorite Fall mum or grass when it’s time to change out the season.

1. Hedera helix: Tried and true, house ivy sometimes just cannot be beat for freshening up an arrangement - and it comes in every shape and color now!

2. Dichondra: Mostly known for two varieties, “Silver Falls” and “Emerald Falls”, this prolific trailer is usually looking its best late in the season as it cascades over edges creating a shimmering silver or metallic green curtain or skirt to any container planting.

3. Celosia: Pack a punch of color with this late flowering genus. While we particularly love the peach, dusky salmon rose, burgundy, or chartreuse color spectrums, celosia varieties come in hot red, orange, yellow, coral, fuchsia, and magenta. The three major flowers forms are plume (plumosa), wheat (spicata) or brain (cristata). The wheat form is a pollinator magnet late into the season.

4. Alternanthera: Here’s another genus with many outstanding varieties, each sporting a unique leaf shape and color from red thread-like leaves, to broad burgundy leaves to chartreuse, hot pink, and olive leaves. This annual just keeps going and transitions into fall so well when the pumpkins and mums arrive.

5. Ornamental Peppers: Nothing loves the heat more than a pepper plant! Anticipate the fall holiday season with ornamental pepper plants that usually have the start of their fruit by August - and then watch that fruit change colors from green, black, and purple to orange, yellow, lavender, and red. Many ornamental peppers now have marbled, variegated or black leaves to boot.

6. Plectranthus: This is a seriously tough, versatile, multi-faceted annual with varieties that trail or form compact shrubs and come in hues of silver, olive, lime, or purple. They produce purple flowers (or no flowers!) and either have scalloped, fuzzy, or shiny leaves. Most have aromatic leaves with each variety coming with its own distinct fragrance. At the terrain stores, we have ‘Cerveza + Lime’, ‘Nicoletta’, ‘Troy’s Gold’, ‘Mona Lavender’, ‘Silvershield,’ and ‘Iboza’ vine varieties.

Ready for an annual refresh? Visit your local terrain nursery to choose your favorites from Kerry Ann's picks!