While they may not be as popular as the whites, yellows, or reds, purple flowers are my favorite of all. If you’re looking for some annual purple flowers that will carry your garden all season long, you’ve come to the right post.
The best choices for annual purple flowers are petunias, snapdragon, dianthus, sweet alyssum, asters, anemone flowers, morning glory, lisianthus, and freesia. Larkspur and lobelia can also bring a splash of purple to your flower beds.
Let’s discuss a few more species for your garden.
Petunias
Petunias are a great choice for purple flowers in your garden. They are easy to grow and come in a variety of colors, including purple. They make a great addition to any garden and can be used to add color to borders, containers, or hanging baskets.
Some of the best types of petunias are TidalWave, if you’re looking to cover a lot of space, and ‘Night Sky’, which gives you purple flowers with white, star-like dots scattered across the flowers.
Impatiens
Impatiens are another popular choice for flowers for your garden. While purple isn’t the most popular color, they do come in purple, and they are easy to care for. Impatiens need to be watered regularly, and they will bloom all summer long.
Impatiens are a particularly versatile plant that can work in full sun all the way to full shade, depending on which variety you pick up.
Verbena (AKA Vervain)
Vervain produces prodigious amounts of pink or purple flowers on top of tall flower stalks. The flowers are tubular and have five petals. This plant can be either an annual or perennial depending on which species you get and can be found growing in meadows, fields, and roadsides.
Vervain can be an excellent plant to grow if you’re looking for something with smaller clusters of flowers, rather than big flowers.
Pentas
Pentas are a great plant that is a perennial in the warmest regions (zone 10 and up) but is grown as an annual everywhere else. It produces flowers in a variety of colors, but it comes in purple as well.
Like the vervain, it produces clusters of small, star-shaped flowers. These flowers (for the purple variety) are more on the lavender and pinkish-purple end of the spectrum, but they are still a welcome addition to any garden.
Salvia
Salvia comes in a variety of colors, some being annual and some perennial. Even the perennial varieties are often grown as annual or biennial flowers, so they’ll be right at home in a garden filled with annuals.
The purple Salvia varieties produce tall spikes of purple flowers that attract bumblebees and other pollinators all day long. If you’re looking for a pollinator garden, this would be my first choice to add.
Snapdragon
Snapdragons are one of those classic flowers that you can find in practically any color. They come in shades of purple, pink, white, yellow, and red, and they add a touch of elegance to any bouquet or arrangement. They’re also relatively easy to care for, making them a great choice for beginner gardeners.
If you’re looking for a cottage-style garden, you should definitely consider adding snapdragons to your flower beds.
Celosia
Celosia is one of those plants that produce flowers that are unique among the world of commonly grown plants. Instead of traditional flowers, they produce these spikes of almost fuzzy-looking fur.
They come in a wide variety of sizes, depending on which variety you get, and they are a great choice if you’re looking to add some contrast to the rest of the flowers in your garden.
Pairing them with petunias is a great way to play the spiky nature of the celosia with the mounding habits of the petunia plants.
Cleome Spider Flower
The Cleome Spider Plant is a flowering plant that is native to South America. It is an annual plant that can grow up to 6 feet (2 meters) tall and 18″ (.5 meters) wide. The Cleome Spider Flower has long, spindly stems with small, interesting flowers. It is a popular garden plant because it is drought-tolerant and easy to grow.
Ageratum
Ageratum is another great choice for purple flowers- these being smaller clusters of flowers that look like they haven’t quite opened all the way yet. This annual blooms from late spring all the way until it is killed by frost, and the flowers are a beautiful shade of purple. Ageratum is also a great plant to have in your garden if you’re interested in attracting bees and other pollinators.
Larkspur
The larkspur flower is a versitile flower that is technically part of multiple different genuses, including one for perennial larkspur and one for annuals. The annual larkspur is a great choice for cut flowers, if you’re interested in bringing some color inside.
Larkspur gets its name from its spurred sepals, which are the green “petals” that cup the flower.
Lobelia
Lobelia may not be as well known as other flowers, but it is another choice if you’re looking for a splash of purple in your garden. This plant can be either an annual or perennial, depending on the variety, and will trail out up to 30″, making it great for pots, baskets, or flower beds.
Wishbone Flower
Wishbone flower is a great little flower that will provide you blooms from spring all the way through fall in a wide variety of conditions, full sun to full shade. (Preferring not to be baked in the afternoon sun.)
If you want some two-toned flowers for your garden, this plant is worth your consideration.
Aster
Asters are a type of flower that come in many different shapes and sizes. Some asters may give you neat purple flowers with yellow centers, while others may give you messy ruffled flowers. It all depends on the type of aster you get!
Asters make great pollinator plants, and can attract Monarch butterflies to your garden if you live in their range or on their migration path.
Calibrachoa
Calibrachoa is a trumpet shaped, mounding annual that is often referred to as Million Bells or Mini-Petunia. This plant is great when you need flowers across a larger area or want to make a nice-looking hanging basket.
Lavender
Lavender is so much associated with purple flowers that even its name has become associated with a hue of purple. This plant isn’t just for looks, though, it’s widely used as a calming fragrance in soaps, lotions, oils, and other products, plus – for a few species of lavender only – it can be used to brew tea and flavor drinks.
If you want a multi-use plant for your flower bed, this is the one to grab.
Kalanchoe
Kalanchoe is a genus of flowering succulents that typically bloom from late winter through spring, though they can flower year-round depending on where you plant them. I’ve planted this in my garden before, and it’s an easy-to-grow annual that really doesn’t require much work.
For the amount of color that it provides, it’s definitely a winner.
Dianthus
Dianthus is a popular cottage-style garden plant that comes in a variety of colors, including purple, pink, white, and red. (Also coming in multi-color varieties.)
Dianthus is an annual that grows well in both full sun and partial shade. Dianthus can be used as a border plant, or planted throughout your garden for extra variety.
Violets
Violets are another one of those plants that are named after a shade of purple. These plants grow all around the world, and are native to North America as well as Africa and other continents, depending on the species you get.
Some species are annual, while others are biennial or perennial, but even the annual species are likely to reseed themselves, so if you want a plant that’s easy to keep under control, this may not be the choice for you. If you want something that’s going to keep coming back with minimal work, however, this is where the violet shines.
Sweet Alyssum
Alyssum is a small, flowering plant that is often used in gardens and landscaping. The plant produces clusters of small, purple or white flowers and has a sweet fragrance. (As its name indicates.)
Alyssum is a trailing plant, which means that it grows along the ground and spreads easily. This makes it a popular choice for use as a groundcover or in hanging baskets.
Globe Amaranth
Globe amaranth is an interesting plant that produces ball-like flowers – giving it the “globe” part of its name. In addition to just being an interest piece for your garden, globe amaranth flowers will attract butterflies and other pollinators to your garden.
Vinca
Vinca are extremely tough flowers. Easy to plant, easy to grow, drought resistant, disease resistant, and produce tons of vibrant blooms for your garden. All this upside does come with some drawbacks, though.
Vincas are prodigious self-seeders, so if you plant them, expect to see hundreds of baby vincas sprouting up for years afterwards anywhere there is a bare patch of dirt.
African Daisy
The African Daisy is native to Africa, but has been naturalized in other parts of the world. It is an annual or perennial herbaceous plant with a rosette of leaves and a solitary flower head per flowering stem. The flower head is most commonly known for the white petals and yellow disk-shaped center, but it comes in a large variety of colors – including purple.
Freesia
Freesia is an interesting plant that produces a line of flowers off of each stem. The flowers come in a variety of colors, including white, yellow, and purple. They have a sweet smell and are often used in arrangements or as part of a bouquet.
Planted as a bulb, these plants are perennials in zones 9-10 but will die off in colder regions unless you dig the bulbs up and bring them in for the winter.
Anemone
Anemone flowers are delicate, beautiful flowers that come in a variety of colors. They can be found in fields and gardens, and are often used as decoration. Anemone flowers are unique because their petals can fall off as the flower fades or is pollinated, yet they still manage to remain beautiful.
Anemone flowers will provide you with color thoughout spring all the way into fall, as long as it isn’t too hot where you live.
Morning Glory
Morning glory is a great looking vine that can easily be grown in many parts of the country. It has beautiful trumpet-shaped flowers that open up in the morning and close up by the afternoon.
(Hence the name.)
The flowers come in a wide range of colors, including blue, white, pink, and purple. Morning glory grows best in full sun and well-drained soil.
Lisianthus
Lisianthus, also known as Prarie Gentian, is a plant that produces some very interesting flowers that add quite a bit of attractiveness to your garden. Lisianthus flowers come in a variety of colors, including pink, purple, and white but can be difficult to grow from seed.
If you’re into cut flowers, lisianthus is a popular choice in boquets and other flower arrangements.
Geranium
Part of the Pelargonium family, Geraniums are a popular plant because of how easy it is to care for. They can be put in hanging baskets, pots, or directly in the ground and are commonly available at most garden centers.
You’ll find a few shades of purple and lavender among the more than 400 different species of geranium available. These plants can be annual, biennial, or perennial depending on which one you pick up.
Chrysanthemums
Chrysanthemums are traditionally thought of as a fall flower, but they can bring color all season long. Mums are available in purple but also a number of other colors. These beautiful plants are technically perennials but in practice are most often grown as annuals due to their non-hardy nature.
If you’re into cut flowers, there are varieties of mums that are perfect for cutting.
Pansies
Native to France, pansies are one of the most distinctive flowers in the gardening world. If you’ve seen a pansy once, you’ll recognize one anywhere you see one. These flowers bring beauty and interest to your garden whichever color you choose and wherever you put them.
