Gardening Column: Moving past geraniums — what lies ahead?

Having paid proper obeisance to the omni-present, ever-popular geranium, let us move ahead, skipping right over petunias and marigolds, and spend some time with some of the lesser known but wonderful annuals. A number of these are recent entries into the garden world and very welcome ones at that.

One of these, and I’ve been growing it for the past several years, is angelonia, also called “summer snapdragon.” It grows in medium-height spires, much like perennial salvia, and the flowers are, I suppose, a bit like snapdragons, although prettier. The flowers come in shades of blue, purple or white and pink, although I’ve never seen this latter shade. I have had the blues for some years now, mixed in with whites. Some varieties are scented. All are easy to grow.

Angelonia, like many annuals, will manage as a perennial in Zones 9 and 10. Unfortunately we’re Zone 6. Although the plants are billed for “full sun,” which there isn’t much of in my garden, they will manage in half. According to one website, they can be brought inside and wintered-over in the proverbial “sunny window.”

If you want to try this, and I’ve never done it, I’d advise you to place the plants, still in the pots you bought them in, directly into the ground. This was a favorite trick of my mother-in-law’s. She did indeed have a pleasant winter solarium and everything alive there in June went, in their pots, straight into the ground, to be returned, pots washed and dried, before the first frost. No surprise that one of her sons, in his monastery, was Brother Gardener.

Another recent (in gardening, “recent” means within the last 50 years) arrival is calibrachoa, otherwise known as Million Bells.

And the name says it all. There has been a good deal of debate in the world of botany as to whether or not calibrachoa is a separate species — the answer seems to be in the affirmative. They may look like petunias, tiny ones anyway, but they’re not. DNA marker analysis has supported the hypothesis that calibrachoa is its own genus.

Calibrachoa came to Europe about 200 years ago, but didn’t start to become popular until Suntory, a $14- billion-dollar global company based in Osaka, Japan, started experimenting with hybridizing them in the late 1980s. The first hybrid cultivars appeared for sale here in the early 1990s. Nearly all of the calibrachoa available in stores today are hybrid cultivars, most from Suntory.

One of the plant’s drawbacks? Calibrachoa produces very little seed, so it’s not practical for growers to propagate them in the usual way. Rather, they’re propagated vegetatively, by taking cuttings from existing plants. Because this process is more time-consuming, the cost is, of course, passed on to the consumer. Bearing this in mind, you might want to try the same thing yourselves — I haven’t (yet) read anything that suggests you would need a greenhouse to propagate your own, as is the depressing case with many other plants.

Calibrachoa are vigorous growers, with a trailing pattern of growth, most appropriate for hanging baskets or other containers.

They like full sun but will tolerate part shade, although with fewer flowers. They can be pruned to generate greater growth.

The plants are heavy feeders, so either use low-release fertilizer at planting time, or feed frequently. The plants come in a wide range of colors — whites, yellows, blues, lavenders, a sort of rusty red and more. And hummingbirds love them.