Flowers Easy to Grow from Seed
For a beautiful, bountiful border, consider adding lots of annuals to cut For a beautiful, bountiful border, consider adding lots of annuals to cut. They’re very affordable when grown from seed, and if you cut them for bouquets, they’ll produce nectar-rich flowers that attract bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds. Many of my favorite annuals from seed were favorites of home gardeners in the late 1800s. Here are four annuals that add a lot of color, and they can withstand heat and wildfire smoke (cough, cough). They’re on the drought-tolerant side, and three of them are native to the Intermountain West.
1. Lanceleaf Coreopsis (Coreopsis lanceolata, Zones 4–9)
Coreopsis lanceolata (seen above), also known as dickseed, will stand 3 feet tall, but in most situations it will stay about 12 inches tall. It blooms yellow on school buses, is heat-loving, and doesn’t mind being on the dry side. This plant is a happy one-seed plant, and it’s easy to collect the seeds once they’re well-dried and plant them in more areas around your garden.
2. Lemon Bee Balm
Lemon bee balm is also known by several common names, including purple horse mint, lemon mint, and more. Its citrusy scent is a welcome addition to the garden. It will form large colonies, so be aware of that when you plant. However, all that reseeding makes butterflies and bees happy.
3. Rocky Mountain Bee Plant
Rocky Mountain Bee Plant is a show-stopping plant. It is also known as skunk flower or Navajo lettuce. It grows up to 4 feet tall with flowers that look like pink, white, and rose-colored fireworks. Lewis and Clark collected seeds from this plant in South Dakota. Culturally important to Native peoples, it has a history of being used for food, medicine, and dye. If you get too close, it will smell bad, so keep your distance. The smell doesn’t seem to bother bees or hummingbirds, and the plant blooms from mid-July until the first hard frost. It has long, drooping seed pods, and birds find the mature seeds delicious. It is found throughout the West.
4. Zinnias (Zinnia cvs., annual)
Zinnias are the party girls in the garden. Striped, spotted, cactus-flowered, dahlia-flowered, single, double, tall or short, there’s a zinnia for every garden. And every garden should have one zinnia or a hundred zinnias. These festive bloomers love our hot, dry, sun-drenched summers. The more you cut them, the more blooms you’ll have. Best of all, you can easily harvest seeds from any of these plants to share or save. Stay tuned for more tried-and-true garden favorites from the Wild West.
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