Summer is a time of bold barbecue flavors, bright sunlight, vivid green on the fully-leafed trees, and hot temperatures. The garden would be remiss if it didn’t have colorful flowers to match the intensity of the season! Move aside, you pale pastel spring flowers, these eye-zinging blossoms are here to fill the garden beds with a kaleidoscope of hues straight from the paint tube.
Native beauties like Joe Pye Weed, Butterfly Weed, and Coneflowers will bring in even more color as butterflies visit their many blossoms, while the white and yellow sprays of Yarrow drift atop feathery foliage. The sky-blue of Evolvulus pairs marvelously with the razzle-dazzle jazz of the trumpet vines.
Zinnias fill the backdrop with their nodding heads, sunflowers tower overhead like something from Alice In Wonderland, and the hibiscus and daylilies sway slowly in the balmy summer breeze. Slap on a sun hat, sip it all in with your glass of sweet tea, and savor all that is summer. Here are 10 summer flowers you should add to your garden.
1. Zinnia
The Chicago Botanical Garden calls Zinnias the“hardest working summer flower,” and the praise is totally merited. Excellent as a cut flower, easy to grow from seed, attractive to butterflies, stable in the summer’s heat, and available in a dizzying array of bright colors and sizes? If these cheery blooms aren’t already in your garden, you need to fix that problem, pronto!
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Gardeners in zones 3-10should plant these full-sun flowers in any type of soil. Be sure to get the seeds in the ground after the last frost to give your garden blooms for as long as possible.
2. Daylily
Daylilies aren’t picky — they’ll tolerate any soil. Though their blossoms only last a day, true to their name, they offer them in bushel loads! In zones 4-9, plant them in a sunny area where you don’t mind theirplentiful border of leaves, and they’ll reward you with their glad blooms.
Psst, here’s another thing — both the unopened buds and open blossoms are edible, and if you find yourself with too many, there are crisply edible tubers attached to the roots as well.
3. Yarrow
Yarrow is well-known in herbalist circles as a powerful healing herb, but this native perennial is also a beautiful member of a summer garden as well!Hardy and drought tolerant, these low-maintenance flowers attract butterflies and make a fantastic cut or dried flower.
Available in pink, red, white, and yellow varieties, gardeners in zones 3-9 just need somewell-drained soilswith full sun to enjoy these blossoms all summer long.
4. Tropical Hibiscus And Perennial Hibiscus (Swamp Rose Mallow)
The huge bloom oftropical hibiscusseems to be synonymous with beaches, island living, and luxurious vacations. If you live in zones 9 or 10, you can grow this showy plant year-round. But if it’s something a little hardier that you seek, try growingswamp rose mallow, the wetland-loving cousin that is hardy all the way to zone 4!
玫瑰锦葵,有时也被称为多年生木槿,需要潮湿,肥沃的土壤,充分的阳光,所以一定要把它种植在一个地方,可以支持它的营养负荷开花!
5. Joe Pye Weed
Thisnative floweris adored by butterflies and bees, and for good reason! It grows into an impressively tall flower stalk — sometimes 12 feet tall — topped with the brightest fuchsia flowers.
Lasting from mid-summer to fall, this plant grows with all the vigor of a weed in zones 4-9. In the wild, they enjoy rather moist soils, so plant them in partial shade if your garden is on the dry side. Just be sure to give them plenty of room to reach their full glory!
6. Butterfly Weed
Thislow-growing member of the milkweed familysports a spray of orange flowers that no picture can really do justice. Do you have a sunny, sandy location that is lacking a certain zing? Give this showy native perennial a home!
Though it may take up to three years to really get growing, gardeners in zones 3-9 will find it well worth the wait for those eye-dazzling blooms that attract butterflies and admiring glances all summer long.
7. Sunflowers

Is there anything more summery than abright yellow sunflower? The Spanish name for sunflower,girasol(转向太阳)是一个特别可爱的词,用来描述这种巨大的花喜欢在天空中追随太阳。
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Plant seeds in sun-soaked, sandy soil after the last frost to enjoy enormous blooms and seed-loving birds all summer long. Zones 1-10 can enjoy this gorgeous growing giant. You can even harvest the dried-out seed heads for next year’s blooms…and to give your chickens a nutritious treat!
8. Coneflowers
Gardeners call it coneflower, herbalists call it echinacea, goldfinches and butterflies call it delicious, but everyone calls it beautiful. Thecheery, purple bloomsof this perennial, daisy-like flower are a welcome sight springing from sandy, sunny sites.
Plant seeds in zones 3-9 in the fall for a summer display. They seem to prefer poor soil — it encourages bigger blooms, rather than bigger foliage. With its deep-reaching roots,all forms of echinacea are drought-tolerant.
9. Trumpet Vine
Gardeners in zones 4-10 can grow thishuge, trailing vine为了吸引蜂鸟和赞美!能够达到30英尺长和潜在的破坏砖的工作,一定要种植这个藤在一个地方,它的蓬勃发展将受到赞赏,而不是遗憾。
Though trumpet vine tolerates bothfull sun and partial shade, its rapid growth requires rich soil. Love the five-inch-long flowers, but not the trailing bulk? Plant it in the open, without access to anything to climb on, and trumpet vine will tend to stay in a more shrubby shape.
10. Evolvolus
A member of themorning glory family, Evolvolus为你的花园增添了美丽的天蓝色,但没有了它野生表亲有时令人讨厌的蔓藤特征。
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Instead, this perennial forms an attractive, silvery-green ground cover in sunny and partially sunny areas. Garden-lovers inzones 4-10can enjoy its waves of blooms in well-drained, sandy soil.
This is great! Last year I planted native heath asters and coneflowers in my yard to attract more bees. Glad to get more ideas