Best Annual Summer Blooms & Perennial Pairings for Texas
Summer Annuals & Perennials for Dallas Sun and Shade
Our intense sun and triple digits here in North Texas can pose challenges to a beautiful summer landscape. Curating the right plants for the right locations is essential for thriving gardens. Fortunately, as veterans of this industry for over 40 years, we’re seasoned experts at steering our clients toward the most beneficial blooms for their estates. Meander through the foliage with us as we explore some of the best annual summer blooms for every area of your gardens, and which perennials pair best.
Essential Prep & Maintenance for Annual Summer Blooms
For scorching Dallas summers, selecting annuals that can withstand the heat is crucial. With a little knowledge and proper maintenance, you can help your new summer blooms survive the July and August heat. Luckily, if you’re enlisted in our estate management service, your personal garden manager will monitor your irrigation system and handle the majority of garden care. However, to keep your summer annuals looking their best, additional watering will be needed, especially for container plants not situated near a sprinkler zone. Here are a few essentials for annuals:
- Soil Preparation: Summer annuals need well-draining soil. Heavy clay soils can be amended with compost to improve drainage and fertility.
- Watering: Early morning or late evening watering is best to reduce evaporation. While most annual summer blooms are heat and drought-tolerant, newly planted annuals need regular watering until they establish. Once they’ve begun to thrive, water deeply and less frequently to encourage root growth.
- Mulch: Applying a layer of mulch around plants helps retain soil moisture, regulate soil temperature, and suppress weeds.
- Fertilization: Annuals are heavy feeders. Providing a balanced fertilizer during peak blooming periods keeps them nourished.
- Deadheading: Regularly removing wilted blooms (deadhead) encourages continuous flowering.
Sun-Loving Summer Blooms
North Texas Summer Annuals for Sun
Planting seasonal color adds vibrant interest to your landscape, which enhances your estate’s beauty and increases its value. Since Dallas summers bring intense heat and sun, it’s important to choose annual summer blooms that can truly thrive in full sun conditions. Here are a few to consider:
Lantana: Depending on the variety chosen, lantana can be found as annuals or Texas native perennials. Available in a variety of colors, these sun-loving plants feature vibrant clusters of blooms that attract pollinators like bees and butterflies.
Perennial Pairings: Mix lantana with Black Eyed Susans for a classic, cheerful look, or complement them with feathery ornamental grass like ‘Dallas Blues’ switchgrass.
Vinca: Also known as Madagascar periwinkle, vinca is incredibly drought-tolerant and blooms profusely in full sun. Producing flowers in shades of pink, rose, or white, it excels in garden beds that receive hot, reflected sun, as well as containers or hanging baskets.
Zinnias: These drought-tolerant, low-maintenance summer blooms come in a wide array of colors and sizes. Their cheerful flowers attract butterflies and work well in garden beds or borders. They also make great cuttings to add a touch of summer color to your indoor spaces.
Perennial Pairings: Plant zinnias alongside native Texas coneflowers (Echinacea purpurea), which also attract beneficial insects.
Angelonia’s gorgeous upright flower spikes are reminiscent of miniature snapdragons. This spreading plant can prosper as a border planting, a ground cover, or a trailing plant for mixed containers.
Perennial Pairings: Angelonia pairs well with contrasting flower shapes that have similar water needs, like salvia, lantana, and coneflower.
Geranium: These annual summer blooms boast round clusters of flowers in red, pink, salmon, orange, violet, white, and bi-colors. Their delicate petals need shielding from the hot afternoon sun, so morning sun and afternoon shade are best. Geraniums thrive in containers or in flowerbeds and make fabulous cut flowers.
Pentas’ stunning, star-shaped flowers attract desirable pollinators such as hummingbirds and butterflies. While technically annuals, they can adapt as perennials in areas with warmer climates and mild winters.
Perennial Pairings: These sun-lovers make cheerful companions to other butterfly-friendly plants like zinnia, salvia, and lantana.
Mandevilla: This tropical summer stunner thrives in full Texas sun with regular watering. Best for container gardens, trellises, or hanging baskets, this low-maintenance plant attracts hummingbirds and butterflies.
Perennial Pairings: Consider planting mandevilla with perennials like caladium, coleus, or tropical ferns for a striking backdrop.
Summer Perennials for Full Sun
A few of our favorite perennials make beautiful complements to many of the above annuals.
Salvia: A Texas native, salvia is a popular shrub sprouting in tall purple flower spikes. Its pollinator-friendly flowers attract bees, hummingbirds, and butterflies. Salvia has been used for centuries in traditional medicine for treating snakebites and as a diuretic and digestive aid. Salvia pairs well with lantana, vinca, and zinnias.
Coneflower is a heat-tolerant bloom that offers common medicinal uses. You may have seen it featured as echinacea on cold remedies and teas for its immune-boosting and anti-inflammatory properties. The Eastern Purple Coneflower is a Texas native, but many other varieties and colors are prevalent in this region. Zinnias, Lantana, and Vinca all accompany coneflower nicely.
Day Lilies are low-maintenance, but invasive perennials that tolerate a range of soil types and sun conditions. Their prolific, vibrant blooms of yellow and orange are common in Texas, but hybrid varieties are also available. Day lilies make excellent companions to cosmos, lantana, zinnias, and vinca.
Made in the Shade
Even in sunny Dallas, every garden has its shaded nooks. These areas offer an opportunity to introduce different textures and colors with annuals that prefer less intense sunlight. Ideal locations for shade-loving plants receive early morning sun and reprieve from fierce afternoon rays.
Best Annual Summer Blooms for Shade
Lobelia produces some of the most vivid blue blooms in the garden. While it can tolerate some direct sunlight, it prefers to stay cool in the shade during hot summer months. Annual varieties are suited for containers and hanging baskets, while perennial varieties are happiest when they can run their roots deep in garden beds.
Fun Fact: This plant genus acts as an antioxidant and has been harvested for herbal medicinal use for asthma, depression, ADHD, memory improvement, and even treatment for drug addiction. However, it may cause adverse side effects, so it’s important to consult a healthcare provider before use.
Perennial Pairings: Ferns, columbine, hostas
Begonia: An excellent container plant, or planted in garden beds dweller, begonias are incredibly versatile and resilient to many conditions. Begonias’ blooms last well through early spring until the first frost, even in very shady conditions. Some varieties produce waxy leaves, while others boast bronze and mahogany foliage.
Perennial Pairings: ferns, hostas, caladium, coleus
Oxalis: Known as Purple Shamrock, this unique plant brings poignant color depth with its triangular purple leaves and pale blooms in various tints of lavender, pink, white, yellow, or red. One unique feature is a phenomenon called nyctinasty, which allows its leaves to fold up at night or during times of stress.
Perennial Pairings: ferns, hostas, astilbe
Favorite Perennials for Shade
Oak Leaf Hydrangea
A graceful, classic shrub, oak leaf hydrangea has versatile applications. It can be a striking single specimen, serve as a beautiful backdrop to smaller shrubs or plants, an elegant element of a mixed border, or as a mass planting or deciduous hedge. After most other plants of this genus have shed their leaves, this beguiling beauty turns lovely shades of red or purple, lasting long through November or December. Its blooms also produce nectar and pollen that attract bees, hummingbirds, and butterflies. Oakleaf hydrangeas pair well with other shade enthusiasts like ferns, hostas, or astilbes.
Variegated Ginger: This hardy, tropical, ornamental plant works well in a border or as a container plant. Its gorgeous, 2-toned leaves add dimension, and its pale green, pink, or white flowers form tubular blooms that attract hummingbirds and butterflies during the summer. Combine it with other tropical plants such as palms or cannas in areas that receive morning sun and afternoon shade.
Hosta: Well adapted to North Texas and grown for their colorful foliage and magnificent mounding form, hostas boast textured leaves in green, blue-green, yellow, or variegated. Fragrant white or pale blue flowers rise from the center of the plant in the heat of summer and attract pollinators. Hostas love the shade and work well in shady garden beds and borders. They make great companion plants for flowering spring bulbs, hydrangea, coral bells, and ferns.
Foxtail Fern: This vibrant green plant possesses unique, upright, textured plumes with dainty needle-like foliage. They produce small white flowers in the spring that transition into red berries by fall. Foxtail ferns make marvelous mass plantings that deliver a pronounced, artistic statement. Excellent for adding height and contrast, pair them with hostas, coral bells, or astilbe.
Seasonal Sans Bloom Color
While not technically blooming plants, we love these particular ones for their impressive, colorful foliage and striking contrast to summer flowers:
Cordyline: Some annuals can be perennials here in Texas, like the striking spikes of Cordyline. This ornamental plant adds majestic depth to garden beds or containers with its tall, sword-like red to purple foliage. It coordinates nicely with ferns and delicate blooms.
Caladium: This posh plant proves that you don’t need blooms to be a showstopper. Its vivid-colored foliage dazzles in shades of red, pink, and white from late spring through fall. Previously considered only a shade-dwelling plant, new varieties have been developed for full sun areas. Used as an annual in Texas, caladium’s vibrant leaves can be showcased as a border plant or planted in groups with ferns, begonias, impatiens, coleus, and hostas.
Asparagus Fern: Although not a true fern, asparagus fern is an evergreen that prefers bright, indirect or filtered sunlight, but can also handle morning sun and afternoon shade. Its cascading bright green plumes provide contrast in texture, color, and height to colorful blooms or taller plants. This hardy hero can be planted outdoors in Texas and covered or brought inside during winter.
Schedule Your Summer Color Installation
Carefully curated annuals paired with complementary perennials combine to create a stunning, sustainable garden that’s well-suited to our Dallas climate. Add vibrant color and infinite value to your estate with annual summer blooms in a summer color installation that suits your space. Our horticulturists, designers, and garden managers work together to assemble and maintain a showcase of garden beds and container color that will leave all the neighbors talking. Contact us today to schedule your consultation.
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