Annual and Perennial Flowers

We have a variety of beautiful plants in our backyard gardens, they are a mix of annual and perennial flowers. It’s a long-held belief that annuals bloom for one season while perennials come back year after year.

Annuals: Plants that flower and die in one season are annuals Perennials: Plants come back for many seasons and grow fuller each year.

My mom loved flowers and most of her plants were perennials. They started out small but each year became larger and fuller. The ones I remember the most were the fragrant purple lilacs, a colorful rainbow of iris and lily of the valley. The front of the yard was lined with peonies and up the path we had hosta. Even without pictures, I can still see all the beauty in our yard when I was growing up.

I like perennials because they come back year after year. One the my favorite perennial in our yard is an Azalea bush we received in 2000 when my mom passed away. It was in a small pot and maybe 15″ tall at the most. Now this plant is over five feet tall and over eight feet diameter. The gorgeous pink blooms bring back so many memories of mom and I know she is looking down watching over her memory garden.

Of course our perennial roses are breathtaking, my hubby talks to them daily and they bloom from mid March until November or December. But come the next year they are ready to show their beauty once again.

It’s been a long-held belief that annuals only bloom one season, they are very colorful and some annuals bloom in the spring and summer and others are more for the fall.

For the summer I love the petunias we have hanging in mom’s memory garden. The flowers are so vibrant and usually last from late spring until end of summer. This is a petunia and another annual we purchased in June 2019. I put them together in one basket and they bloomed so nicely. But as the season ended so did the flowers.

But look at this June! The petunia from last year starting blooming again and by July look how beautiful it is hanging on the fence in Lia’s Garden!

In the fall we decorate with mums around our fall display. Mums are another annual that are so pretty while in full bloom but once the season ends, the plants end also.

But look at our annuals again this year! They were totally gone at the end of last year but come June they started blooming again and showing their beauty!

We have two gardens in our backyard that have both perennials and annuals. One is Mom’s Memory Garden that we started in 2000 when my mom passed away. We updated the garden in the summer of 2019, adding a penny plaque I made from pennies from heaven that mom sent down.

The other garden was started this spring in a corner of the yard that was basically a weed bed. Rich cleaned the corner up, we transplanted a rose bush and Nandina for starters. After that we kept adding flowers, butterfly decor, a butterfly crossing sign and even shiny silver reflective butterflies that float in the breeze. This is now Lia’s Reflection Garden.

I love all flowers, they bring smiles and happiness to our yard. But my favorite are the perennials that come back year after year unless they are like some of our annuals that changes a long-held belief that they are suppose to be here for only one season. We have petunias and mums that have bloomed two years in a row!