Bottom 10 Annual Flowers

A patch of pansies before the rabbits found them.

I spend a lot of time telling people about my favorite plants and some of the best new or under-used varieties worth trying.

What I don’t spend as much time talking about is plants at the other end of the spectrum – the wimps, the bug magnets, the feeble bloomers, the uglies and the easy-to-kills.

Here’s a look at 10 annual flowers I’d rank at the bottom of my planting list:

1.) Pansies and violas. I can’t keep either of these out of the rabbits’ mouths for more than 5 minutes after I plant. Which is just as well because the ones I’ve struggled to protect fry to a crisp by July anyway… even the supposedly heat-tolerant ones.

2.) Lobelia. These dainty bloomers look so enticing in the greenhouse with their deep blue flowers. But like pansies, they don’t like our summer heat and at the least shut down flowering – if not croak altogether. At least the rabbits don’t eat them.

3.) Annual phlox. These don’t die in summer, but I wish they would to be put out of their misery. They flower great early in the season, then figure they’ve earned enough respect and just quit. In my opinion, too many other annuals bloom from May to frost to spend money on half-season performers.

Lobelia that have fried by mid-summer in Penn State’s Trial Gardens.

4.) Gazania. Gesundheit. Besides the name that reminds me of a sneeze sound, gazania only open when the sun’s out. Their daisy-like flowers are beautiful and showy, but what’s the point if they’re going to stay shut half the season? Rabbits also find them tasty – open or closed.

5.) Nemesia. Here’s another flower that looks great in a spring pot with their orchid-like spiky flowers. By July, though, it’s in suffer mode. Breeders keep trying to come up with a variety that blooms as well in summer as in spring and fall, but I haven’t seen a winner yet. Go with angelonia instead for this style of flower.

6.) Dianthus. Same story as annual phlox. Nice in spring, sorry by summer. Also potential rabbit food.

7.) Red salvia. I never learn with this one. I keep buying them because they attract hummingbirds and have such cheery red flowers in May. But by mid-summer, the red has turned to brown and very few new buds are bringing up the rear. Some people have luck with these. I don’t. Blue salvia is way better for me.

8.) Snapdragons. Again, it’s the heat that shuts down flowering in summer. A few newer varieties do a little better than older types, but snaps have been consistent under-performers for me in summer when an annual really should be at its best.

An underwhelming flower show of blue torenia.

9.) Torenia. The so-called “wishbone flower” got a little better-known as a shade alternative to impatiens, which is getting hammered by a deadly new downy mildew disease. I tried torenia several times in past years and was always unimpressed at the species’ flower power. So I stopped planting them. Given the impatiens situation, I tried again and got the same result as before. This one has breeding potential, but no one’s come close to the jackpot yet, from what I’ve seen.

10.) Nicotiana. No worries with the rabbits eating flowering tobacco. But like red salvia, this one starts nicely out the greenhouse gate but quickly but doesn’t seem to have much of a game plan for continuing to produce flower buds in real-life ground conditions. A spattering of new blooms mixed among the browned greenhouse blooms doesn’t cut it in my garden.