48 care-free annuals that will liven your outdoor space

Annual plants complete their entire life cycle, from seed to flower and back to seed again, all in one season. Because their time is limited, annuals bloom with gusto, often for months on end. Here are some care-free annuals that will help transform your garden into a beautiful outdoor space.

A number of perennials also are willing to grow as annuals, particularly semitropical plants, such as lantana, four-o'clock, and sweet potato vine.

• Many gardeners simplify this matter by referring to all plants that are easily grown for a single season as annuals.

Care-free annuals are the workhorses of the garden, providing reliable foliage and flower colour from spring to fall, and throughout winter in mild climates.

• In mild climates, early-blooming, cool-season annuals such as pansies are perfect companions to spring-flowering bulbs and flowering shrubs.
• With the onset of summer, you can switch to heat-tolerant, warm-season annuals including marigolds, salvias, and zinnias.
• The majority of bedding plants that fill stores in spring are annuals, so it is hard to imagine an easier way to kick off a colourful summer than to buy a few, prepare a suitable bed, and pop in these ready-to-grow plants.
• Many of the annuals sold as bedding plants are compact dwarf varieties, bred to need little maintenance and grow as well-behaved subjects in gardens, containers, and window boxes. They bloom for months and you can just toss them on the compost heap at season's end, and you're ready for next year.

Although annuals are, by definition, one-season wonders, they sometimes self-sow, making replanting unnecessary.

• The best of these are charmingly informal plants, such as forget-me-nots and poppies, that surprise us by cropping up in new places, and delight us with the bonus of free plants.

The annuals listed on the following pages will look good for an extended period of time without fuss or bother. Easy, fast, and inexpensive, they are ideal for busy gardeners.

1. Ageratum
2. Begonia
3. Borage
4. Browallia
5. Butter Daisy
6. Calendula
7. Castor Bean
8. Chrysanthemum
9. Cockscomb
10. Coleus
11. Cosmos
12. Dusty Miller
13. Fan Flower
14. Flowering Cabbage
15. Flowering Tabacco
16. Forget-Me-Not
17. Four-O'Clock
18. Fuchsia
19. Bedding Geraniums
20. Globe Amaranth
21. Grasses
22. Impatiens
23. Lantana
24. Larkspur
25. Lavatera
26. Licorice Plant
27. Lobelia
28. Marigold
29. Nasturtiums
30. Pansy
31. Perilla
32. Periwinkle
33. Petunia
34. Plectranthus
35. Poppy
36. Portulaca
37. Salvia
38. Snapdragon
39. Spider Flower
40. Statice
41. Stock
42. Swan River Daisy
43. Sweet Alyssum
44. Sweet Potato Vine
45. Tithonia
46. Verbena
47. Wishbone Flower
48. Zinnia

The more you try, the more of these care-free garden performers you'll fall in love with, and the more ways you'll find to use them. Keep these tips in mind and get started today!