The Endless Annual

4 or 5 years ago, I bought a petunia from a local florist. She had pictures of the plant, and it look great in a planter. It was called “Laura Bush” petunia. I was curious about the name of the petunia so I “Googled” it that evening. Sure enough there it was, a fairly new petunia developed in Texas.You can read about it here http://www.texasgardener.com/pastissues/marapr02/laurabush.html .

My plant did very well that first year and I was very impressed. It really was drought resistant and just kept getting bigger  until it was killed by frost.
But…… that isn’t what I like best about it. The best thing is , I haven’t had to buy this plant again. It is a  extremely proficient reseeder. (spell check is telling me this isn’t a word)
This is a picture of a few of this years plants.

This picture doesn’t show the beautiful color, but you can see how big  it gets. This is 3 plants,they came up in one spot , or I move two . Now they completely cover my path. We haven’t had any rain for over a week , and I don’t give them any extra water.


I usually see them about mid June , but they do keep showing up all summer. The above plant came up in the middle of a gravel path  few weeks ago and I didn’t have the heart to pull it out .

In this wider shot, you can see more starting.



A co-worker gave me a few amaranthus plants. Fellow gardeners tell me , that I have to careful with this one . They have so many seeds , I could be soon over run.





They certainly got big, if I do have seedlings next year , I plan to use them for a border.The dead stalks behind the furthest amaranthus were my hollyhocks. I had a picture in a previous blog, they had seeded themselves. You can also see the same 3 petunias plants from this angle.

Till next time,
God Bless,
Lynda