Summer Flowers

If you're out there, going to plant your annual beds, you're like, "Okay, what kind of flowers can I plant right now that can handle all this sun and drought conditions?" Well, if you've got full sun that's one thing, if you've got some shade that's another thing.

Let's assume that you have a little of both. If you want to match the same type of look to flowers, if you've got half of your lawn is in the shade, half of it's in sun, the cool thing you can do is plant a mixture of ... this is a vinca. This is annual vincas and you can also throw in some impatiens. Impatiens look just about the same except they grow in the shade. If you've got a little bit of shade and a little bit of sun, mix your impatiens in the shade and your vincas in the sun. That looks great. So, vincas also, they look good in hanging plants. If you want to do some hanging stuff that is good for that.

Let's walk around a little bit and look around here in the nursery and see what other types of summer flowers are good for north Texas. All right, not that it's an annual, this is a perennial, but lantana. Lantana is great for the full sun. You see lantana all over north Texas, especially like Flower Mound, Highland, Lewisville, where most of you guys live. Lantana is a great ground cover. It grows about a foot tall but it'll spread out. It's like one plant like this right here, this is good for about a 36 inch ball, and it'll grow about a foot off the ground. This one is yellow which is a nice and hardy thing, but they grow in a lot of different colors.

Walk down here and let's check this out. This one's a little bit bare green, so it's a little bit red, a little bit burnt orange, really cool color. And we got some ... this one is a mixture of pink and yellow, and those are going to be really hot and popping. Take a look at some of these blooms. You can imagine if that is covered up in some blooms and you got a nice corner of your flower bed, maybe out there by the driveway, maybe up against a brick wall, something where that radiated heat is just a lot, and you think, what can I possibly plant there that'll survive? Check it out. Butterflies are coming on this one, so if you like butterflies ... See that right here?

Well, it's kind of hard to catch it on video, but you know what I mean, if you like that sort of thing. But look at these, this ground cover's great. It blooms, it's awesome. The hotter the better. And let's walk around and see a couple other awesome perennials or annuals, so what's good in the summertime for blooms.

Okay, this was one of my all time favorites. You can mix this with a couple of different annuals for texture. This is called Mexican heather, take a look at this stuff. That's a nice kind of ground cover. It gets the same kind of shape as like maybe a basket ball. Let me hold one of these up here, so you can see it grows about maybe a foot and a half off the ground. It's about the same size as a basketball. It gets kind of a hollow center to it, kind of a big old spirally thing, once it's full grown and stuff, but this comes back, so very cool plant, has these a nice purple leaves on it.

I like to mix these with some ... in the spring I'll put out some petunias and then you can put out some this time of year, mix it in with some vincas, maybe some of that sweet potato vine. If you've seen that, we'll find some sweet potato vine, maybe if we're lucky. Here in a second, I can show you what that looks like. But this is a great, if you have one of those natural, you know like Texas landscape. This is great for stuff like that. I love Mexican heather.

Okay, a second ago I was talking about sweet potato vine and this is sweet potato vine in two different colors. We've got a purple potato vine here, which is awesome, cool leaf, and it'll actually throw off some pink flowers. And then we've got the normal green or lime green, sweet potato vine. And so you can throw in a one quart little plant and it'll grow out to like 36 to 48 inches. You can see, it'll just throw off these long awesome vines. Really awesome.

Now you can mix this with, like they did right here, they mixed it with some vincas, some different types of grasses, and it'll make great for pots because they're so hardy for drought. You can also use this sweet potato vine as ground cover. Look at this other plant over here, but you can use it in a lot of different ways and it takes up a lot of surface area, so a big bang for your buck, using sweet potato vines. All right guys, let's go see something else.

Okay, another awesome thing to use in the summertime are succulents. This is called purslane. Obviously it's good for hanging plants. These will actually drop seeds, so if you hang this on like on your front porch, you might notice that later on in the year you might have some growing in the, if you have cracks or the flower beds next to this, because the seeds will drop.

Great for the summertime because it's a succulent, kind of like a cactus and stuff like that. But purslane is a succulent you also get moss rose and ice plant. Those are also succulents that bloom really nicely, great for hanging plants, great for ground covers as well. But go check those out. This is just like a $15 hanging plant. Purslane, they come in a variety of colors as you can see here, between peaches and yellows and all the shapes and all the little colors there, mixed colors, pinks and yellows and reds. Just good looking stuff.

We love flowers over here at Main Street Mowing, and it's summertime, so there's three types of planting seasons. We like this plant, March 15th, we do all your spring flowers, of course, like ... oh, what do we plant? Petunias, usually. Petunias do really good. You get your biggest bang for your buck with petunias in March.

And then June 15th we come in with our summer flowers, and then October 15th, you come in with your winter style flower, so that'll be like pansies and colorful kale, stuff like that. Anyways, that is the summer flower tips, guys. Go out, plant your summer flowers, right now is a great time. Don't forget to water them in. Stay out of the heat, it's a hundred degrees today. We're going to get out of the heat and talk to you guys a little bit later. Adios.