14 Best Annual Flowers for Summer

No flower says summer like a sunflower. These big, yellow blooms are a smile on a stem. They’re easy to grow from seed and can take as much heat as the season can dish out. The quintessential sunflower is sunshine yellow, but these annuals come in surprising colors like red, burgundy, pale lemon, peach, vanilla and orange. If you want a more exotic color, you’ll need to grow them from seed because most bedding plants will be classic yellow.

Sunflowers come in many sizes, too, so there’s one for every plot. ‘Mammoth’ sunflowers produce dinner-plate-sized blooms on towering 14-foot stalks that look striking grown in rows in a yard. If your space is smaller, fill a pot with ‘Elf’ sunflowers that have four-inch diameter blooms on 16-inch stems.

Zinnias are another classic sun-loving flower of summer. Just glance at a bed of these brightly colored blooms in shades of scarlet, purple, yellow, lime green, peach and zany bicolor blends and it’s an instant mood boost.

Native to Mexico, zinnias thrive in heat and drought. They’re easy to grow from seed or transplant and can take as much intense summer weather as the season can dish out. Zinnia blossoms range in size from one to six inches in diameter, depending on the variety. Put tiny Thumbelina zinnias in a container or plant a bed of giant State Fair zinnias in your yard and you’ll have armfuls of cut flowers all summer.

Cosmos are an unfussy annual with daisy-shaped blooms. Cosmos produces white, hot pink, yellow and orange blooms on fern-like foliage and look great planted with zinnias, Shasta daisies and sunflowers. Cosmos are easy to directly sow into the garden, but you can buy seedlings if you don’t want to wait two months for seeds to turn into flowers.

Cosmos range in height from one to three feet, depending on the variety. They’re good cutting flowers and pollinators love their nectar. Plant these beauties and you’ll get weeks of fresh-cut flowers from your garden as well as lots of winged creatures who come to dine on your flowers.

Marigolds are like the sun in flower form, cheery, pompom-like flowers in shades of yellow, gold, orange, and red. They’re simple to grow from seed or start as transplants you buy in the garden center. They’ll bloom all summer and stand up to intense heat and humidity.

Marigolds range in size depending on the variety. French marigolds are compact, just six inches tall at maturity and ideal for containers at the front of a bed, while African marigolds get up to two feet tall. Deer won’t eat marigolds, a plus if you live by a wooded area. Few things are more discouraging than having deer make dinner out of your plants.

Celosia has feathery plumes of flowers in just about every color but blue. There’s ‘Dragon’s Breath’ which has red flowers and purple leaves and ‘Century Mix’ which blooms in red, yellow, orange and magenta with green leaves. Celosia make for long-lasting cut flowers and they look lovely in beds and containers. Plants range in height from one to three feet, depending on the variety. Give celosia full sun and well-drained soil and you’ll have blooms all summer.

Begonias are popular annuals — they’re easy to grow and thrive in a variety of conditions.  They range in size from six inches tall to three feet tall and can grow in shade or sun, depending on the variety, so there’s a begonia for every purpose. Put them in containers, hanging baskets, or flower beds. Begonia blooms can be orange, pink, red, white or yellow. The flowers may have a single row of petals or several rows of petals.

Wax begonias are the most common type, named for the waxy look of their leaves. Cane begonias, also known as angel wing begonias for their wing-shaped leaves, have gorgeous foliage to go with their pretty blooms.

Angelonia’s spikes of purple, pink or white flowers look fragile, but this is a tough plant that thrives in containers in hot, sunny locations where other flowers would conk out. Angelonia will produce flowers into the fall and is a favorite of bees and hummingbirds. They grow from one to two feet tall, depending on the variety, so they’re good for containers. The ‘Angelface’ series of Angelonia grows in a cascade and looks lovely in hanging baskets or as the spiller in a mixed container.

Calibrachoa have only been around for about 30 years so they’re a relative newcomer to the plant world. This hybrid annual flower was introduced to the market in 1993 and bred to bloom continuously with very little help from humans. Calibrachoa, also called Million Bells, is fast-growing and stands up to direct sun and hot, humid conditions.

Calibrachoa only grows four inches tall but it spreads about two feet wide so it’s a good pick for containers and window boxes. It’s a vigorous plant that flowers in shades of orange, pink, purple, red, white, yellow and combinations of those colors. Calibrachoa produces masses of one-inch-wide blooms that look like tiny petunias and bring hardy color to containers or along walkways.

Mandevilla is a perennial tropical vine that’s grown as an annual in most of the United States. Mandevilla brings vertical color to your yard with its clusters of big, tropical-looking blooms in shades of pink, white and red. Plant it in a container on your porch or patio and let it wind up the support posts or a trellis.  

It’s a touch of the Caribbean in a pot. Mandevilla grows up to eight feet tall and blooms all summer long. If you want to keep your mandevilla longer than one season, bring it indoors through the winter. If you protect the plant from freezing temperatures, it’ll grow for years.

This sun-loving plant is ideal to plant in containers, baskets and window boxes where it’ll spill over the edges in a cascade of blooms. Verbena is a short, wide plant that grows a foot tall and up to 20 inches wide, so you can plant it as groundcover or train it to twine up a trellis or fence. Verbena produces clusters of flowers in blue, pink, purple, red or white. It’s drought-tolerant, so it’s a good pick for rock gardens, hot, dry climates or for people who don’t want to water all the time.

Pentas bloom all summer long with clusters of star-shaped flowers in red, pink and white. Pollinators love their nectar, so a bed of pentas will attract hummingbirds and bees. Pentas can stand up to heat and humidity like a champ, and they work as filler in containers or in a mixed bed of annuals and perennials. Most pentas stay less than 1.5 feet tall, but the ‘Sunstar’ series grows more than two feet tall and two feet wide, making it a sizeable plant at maturity.

Salvia, sometimes called sage, is a flower no summer garden should be without. Whether your yard is sunny or shady, dry or wet, there’s an annual salvia that will thrive there. All saliva attracts hummingbirds, and all salvia are good plants for hot, dry places. Depending on the variety, salvia grows from one to three feet tall and produces wands of flowers in blue, pink, red and white. Salvia does well in containers or flower beds.

These yellow, daisy-like flowers take their name from their dark brown center, which reminds some of a dark eye. Black-eyed Susans are hardy plants that thrive in sun and heat, so they’ll keep cranking out drifts of cheerful blooms deep into summer when other annuals have stalled. They grow one to three feet tall, depending on the variety, and they’re a good choice for borders, butterfly gardens or containers. They’re great cut flowers, too. Butterflies, bees, and other pollinators love to eat their nectar so a bed of black-eyed Susans will draw beneficial winged creatures to your yard.

Annual vinca is a tropical plant grown as a sun-loving annual in most regions of the U.S. Vinca has been around a long time and is a common bedding plant for bringing color to window boxes, containers, and beds. It produces in blooms in a range of reds, pinks, white and purples that look a bit like impatiens. Vincas are self-cleaning, which means their spent blooms fall off. You won’t have to deadhead them and they will keep on blooming.