Creating Temporary Gardens With Annuals

By Amanda S.

Although many gardeners work on their landscapes for the long haul, some may not be at their space for more than a season or don’t have the budget for perennial plants. The solution? Create a temporary or low-commitment garden with annual flowers! Use colorful annual wildflowers and flower bulbs for a spectacularly-designed carefree garden that's a reflection of your style and personality.

This is especially helpful if you're creating a garden at a home that you rent, if you're a beginning gardener, or if you just love to experiment. If you love so many flowers and just can't imagine committing to one long-lived perennial garden design, you can take on the challenge and thrill of creating a new design each season.

Great reasons to plant a garden with annual wildflower seeds that bloom just weeks after planting:

1. If you’re renting an apartment or home and don’t want to invest in perennial plants
2. You may not have the budget or design for a full perennial garden yet
3. If you have upcoming work, changes, or renovations to your outdoor space (to create raised beds, upcoming renovations or hardscaping, etc)
4. If you move into a new home late in the season and don’t have time to plant a perennial garden
5. You want a guilt-free cut flower bed for endless bouquets all season long
6. You have a very large garden bed that you want to fill without a lot of digging for individual plants

Zinnias and Cornflower

Annual Flower Gardens: The Possibilities Are Endless

One of the best things about creating temporary gardens is that you aren’t stuck with the design forever. This gives you room to get creative and try different combinations you may not have tried in other circumstances. You can stick to varieties that you know and love, and branch out from there with different color combinations to see what looks good together (and what doesn’t).

Our most popular Annual Wildflowers:

• Zinnia Seeds
• Cosmos Seeds
• Sunflower Seeds
• Bachelor Button Seeds
• Sweet Pea Seeds
• Marigold Seeds
• Nasturtium Seeds

Most Spring-Planted flower bulbs are perennial in only the warmest zones of the United States. You can use these flower bulbs as annuals. At the end of the season when winter arrives, you can dig up the bulbs to use next season, or start anew when spring comes. 

Our most popular flower bulbs:

• Dahlias
• Gladiolus

Starting from seed makes flowers extremely easy to grow and extremely affordable. 

Learn More: How to store seed for next season

Learn More: How to store Dahlias for winter

Shop Annual Wildflower Seeds

One of our favorite parts about annual gardens is the abundance of cut flowers! Sunflowers, Cosmos, and Zinnias shown here. 

An easy combination of Zinnias and Bachelor Buttons on the narrow side of the greenhouse.

This fiery circle meadow was filled with easy-to-grow Cosmos, Zinnias, and Forget-Me-Nots.
 

Sunflowers can create a wall of color along the edge of a property line or along a fence. 

Let your imagination shine with your temporary garden design using annual wildflowers! 

Shop Annual Wildflowers

You can see more of Amanda's journey as a novice farmer here:

• A Journey From Urban Gardening To Rural Homesteading
• The Joys (And Surprises) Of Inheriting A Garden
• Low Maintenance Landscaping With Wildflowers
• Admitting — And Learning From — My Garden Mistakes