Annual
Speed and colour: annuals sprint from seed to bloom in weeks and flower relentlessly until frost — the fastest transformation any garden can buy, often for the price of a seed packet. Tagged here are our guides for the annual stars: marigolds, zinnias, cosmos, petunias, sunflowers, sweet peas and dozens more. Each covers sowing (most are beginner-easy), the pinch that doubles bushiness, deadheading for non-stop bloom, and saving seed for next year. Annuals are also the gap-fillers of design — new perennial bed looking thin? A packet of cosmos hides the wait beautifully.
One habit doubles what you get from almost all of them: pinch out the growing tip when the seedling has three or four pairs of leaves. You lose a fortnight of height and gain a plant twice as bushy with several times the flowers.
