Annuals provide charm to your cottage garden

The appearance of spontaneity is one the most charming characteristics of a cottage garden, and annuals are the perfect tools to achieve this effect. They help to alter the look of the garden from year to year and are an endless source of enchantment for the lucky person who cares for it.

Although shrubs form the bones and perennials contribute substance to the garden, they sometimes need a season or more to grow into maturity. And few can provide color and drama continually throughout the season. Annuals eagerly volunteer to fill the gaps and give the garden color over a long period of time.

What makes cottage garden annuals different from the bedding plants that overflow the benches at your local garden center each spring? Sometimes, there is little difference. But other times, bedding plants have been hybridized to be compact and bloom early, often at the expense of traits like fragrance or the ability to reseed — the characteristics that endeared them to our grandmothers.

Fortunately, many of these old-fashioned plants are being rediscovered by today's gardeners. Joining these original plants are some new varieties that our grandmothers would quickly learn to enjoy due to their unique appearance or the improvements on their old world charm.

Bishop's flower

Queen Anne's lace is often admired growing alongside roads. While it is beautiful in bouquets, it can be an annoying plant in the garden. Its flowers are biennial; it has a long taproot; its foliage is not always the tidiest; and it seeds itself with abandon.

Bishop's flower is a better-behaved look alike that is easily grown from seed and contributes the same delicate and lacy impression. It doesn't need much room to give a meadow-like effect to a garden by planting a few seeds here and a few seeds there between established perennials. Partner Bishop's flower with a blue campanula or balloon flower. The combination will remind you of the way Queen Anne's lace mingles with wild chicory along the roadsides or in vacant lots.

California poppies

California poppies form a carpet of ferny, blue-green foliage throughout the cottage garden. In the spring, satiny, sunset-colored flowers dance above the foliage. California poppies do not transplant well, so plant seeds and then get out of their way. They reseed easily and will weave their way across the garden.

Flowering tobacco

No plant has suffered more from modern hybridization than old-fashioned flowering tobacco. Fifty years ago, gardeners valued this plant for its white, richly scented, trumpet-shaped flowers that closed in the heat of midday and opened once again as the evening approached. In recent years, growers have developed shorter flowering, scentless plants in many colors that hardly resemble the original plant. While these plants are pretty, and they are nice additions to container gardens, taller varieties are best in a cottage garden.

Luckily, many garden centers are beginning to once again offer this old-fashioned plant. Only the Lonely grows up to 5 feet tall. It boasts white, star-shaped flowers that are fragrant in the evening.

Larkspur

The pale pink, soft white or dark blue spikes of larkspur stand tall in the garden. They are the annual version of delphiniums and are easy to grow from seed. Once planted, they will return year after year, self-seeding themselves in small patches throughout the garden.

Love-in-a-mist

Used in gardens since the 16th century, love-in-a-mist delicately laces its way through the garden, but never crowds out companions. Flowers of blue, pink or white appear in mid-July and are followed by decorative seedpods that are often used in dried arrangements. Seed is best sown where it's intended to remain. Love-in-a-mist forms a tap root and is not easily moved.

Verbena bonariensis

Verbenas are indispensable plants for their ability to weave their way through an existing garden and for their persistent flowers in harmonious shades of violet and lavender. The slender stems of Verbena bonariensis grow up to 4 feet tall and are topped with small but plentiful flowers. Despite its height, its form is wispy and airy. This see-through plant doesn't have to be relegated to the back of the border. It can easily squeeze its way into the most crowded gardens.

• Diana Stoll is a horticulturist and the garden center manager at The Planter's Palette, 28W571 Roosevelt Road, Winfield. Call (630) 293-1040, ext. 2, or visit planterspalette.com.