Hi GPODers!

Today we’re in Althea Bailey’s garden, but her submission was a focus on a particularly colorful summer annual: petunias (Petunia cvs., annual). Whether you’re filling in spots in a border, or collecting a kaleidoscope of colors in containers, these perky plants are a joy to have amongst other summer blooms.

This assorted shades of purple petunia is huge and cannot stop growing. Petunias love a lot of water so it’s important to keep them hydrated, top up the water regularly with miracle grow plant food, and watch them grow huge.

Take a look at my photos I hope you will love all the different varieties. Thank you.

With so many different colors and styles, you can plant petunia for years and never get tired of these colorful flowers. In jus this photo, three different purple petunias with distinctively different looks are on display.

Petunias are also one of the very few plants that have several black varieties. This is a great annual if you like some darker tones in the garden, want to plant up something spooky for the Halloween season, or need a dark contrast to bright colors like Althea did here.

But petunias are not the only flowers that Althea is potting up. Some bright red scarlet sage (Salvia splendens, Zones 10–11 or as an annual) and a vibrant pink tobacco flower (Nicotiana alata, Zones 10–11 or as an annual) add some different forms and textures to the mix.

But petunias are really the stars. From mounding pots to hanging baskets dripping with blooms.

Thank you for sharing your flower-filled garden with us, Althea! Seeing all the different varieties you’re growing together gave me a whole new perspective on petunias. It also inspired me to get outside and take some pictures…

Of these absolutely insane marigolds (Tagetes patula) my mother grew from seed! This is the first year she tried out direct-sowing seeds rather than buying plants, so there  She started the seeds a little later than she wanted and while the plants grew and grew all summer, she didn’t get a single flower until late August. Now they are absolutely covered in blooms and even more buds.

This is the ‘Happy Days’ mix from Burpee, so there is a delicious mix of orange, red, and yellow on all of the flowers.

But like Althea’s petunias, I’m loving the variations in colors and styles. Some distinctively striped, others looking nearly monochrome, and others still looked almost outlined in yellow.

Thanks again for sharing, Althea!

Have a garden you’d like to share?

Have photos to share? We’d love to see your garden, a particular collection of plants you love, or a wonderful garden you had the chance to visit!

To submit, send 5-10 photos to [email protected] along with some information about the plants in the pictures and where you took the photos. We’d love to hear where you are located, how long you’ve been gardening, successes you are proud of, failures you learned from, hopes for the future, favorite plants, or funny stories from your garden.

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