Annie's Annuals....here's the thing: these photographic enticements arrive pretty regularly via email.

 I love this nursery. And, as a point of reference, the vast majority of her plants aren't annuals. At least those on the website. Many of the plants in the Florida Garden came from Annie's. Here's what I ordered today:

1    Dudleya hassei "Catalina Island Live-forever"
2.   Agropyron magellinacum "Blue Wheat Grass"
3.   Aristea major
4.   Arthropodium cirratum "Regna Lily"
5.   Carex testacea "Orange New Zealand Sedge"
6.   Cuphea 'Strybing Sunset'
7.   Dudleya pulverulenta "Chalk Live-Forever"
8.   Echium gentianoides 'Tajinaste'
9.   Glaucium grandiflorum
10.  Linaria reticulata 'Flamenco
11.  Mirabilis longiflora "Angel's Trumpets"
12.  Ipomopsis aggregata 'Skyrocket'


That Annie! She caught me at a weak moment this rainy!!! Saturday morning. Some of these are plants I've wanted for a while (the Dudleyas, Aristea, and the New Zealand Sedge). The Ipomopsis I'm intrigued by since I. rubra  is doing well for me. Mirabilis longiflora is just my kind of plant, which is to say, weedy, fragrant, and drought resistant. Horned Poppy is one of my favorite plants so...Glaucium grandiflorum with orange flowers and blue foliage requiring no water....wow. The Echium will work in Florida and the others were just impulse buys. It's going to be a fun box.

About planting in the summer in hot Zone 7 sites.  For  the sake of simplicity, in my mind I divide hardy plants  into two groups: those that make most of their growth in the spring, with maybe a bit more in the fall if it rains when things cool off; and those that love heat and, providing you supply them with water, do their growing in the summer. Conventional wisdom tells us not to plant in the summer, but that last group of plants is much happier if planted when it's hot. In fact, many will languish if dropped into the cool wet soil of early spring. Think of tomatoes or geraniums; you can plant them in early April, but they just sit there till the soil warms up. If planted in the fall, hot season perennials may not make enough growth to get through the winter. Most heat loving plants aren't partial to wet feet in the winter, so they want good drainage and need to make enough growth the first year to get through that first winter.