Top 10 Plants that Flower All Year
Wanting colour in the garden all year is something every gardener wants. It’s best achieved with a mixture of various flowering perennials and annuals as well as colourful foliage plants, but can it be done with just flowers? Short answer, yes!
Check out our other Top 10 Winter Flowering Plants and Top 10 Autumn Shrubs pages for more colour in your garden!
Why do plants flower?
Plants flower to procreate, their vibrant floral displays attracting insects and mammals to help spread their pollen to other plants in the same family. Generally, this is done at specific times of the year, spring being the most obvious! Both flora and fauna get busy during the spring season when it is just starting to warm up.
But not all plants flower just in spring, or even just once in the year! Depending on your climate and how you manage your plants, you can get some varieties flowering almost the entire year. Below is our 10 best year around flowering plants.
Grevillea ‘Winter Wonder’ next to a weeping standard acacia
Top 10 Plants that Flower All Year
- Rose ‘Iceberg’
- Grevillea
- Bracteantha ‘Everlasting Daisy’
- Erigeron ‘Seaside Daisy’
- Polygala ‘Sweet Pea’
- Viola ‘Native Violet’
- Geranium
- Anigozanthos ‘Kangaroo Paw’
- Penstemon
- Alyssum
Rose ‘Iceberg’
This particular rose is one of the most prolific flowerers of the rose family and in warmer areas tend to keep their leaves during the winter. To promote longer flowering, dead head spent blooms.
Grevillea
There are many, many varieties of grevillea available on the market, most flowering for at least 2-3 seasons in the year. In particular the ‘Gaudichaudii’ is a gorgeous groundcover grevillea that is sure to flower all year, attracting beautiful native birds to the garden!
Bracteantha ‘Everlasting Daisy’
A gorgeous little perennial plant with paper-like daisy flowers that form throughout the year, predominantly in spring through to autumn. Everlasting Daisy are also used as cut flowers, lasting years!
Erigeron ‘Seaside Daisy’
Seaside Daisy are very popular in Cottage gardens, used for borders, pots & containers and as a garden bed filler. In warmer climates these cute, low maintenance perennials tend to flower for the whole year, particularly if they dead-headed.
Polygala ‘Sweet Pea’
With purple pea like flowers that form throughout the year, this evergreen shrub is suitable for hedging, borders, pots & containers. They can also be used as a feature, particularly when neatly trimmed.
Viola ‘Native Violet’
This little native groundcover looks great in pots, between pavers and to fill bare spaces in garden beds. Their tiny little purple flowers appear on tall stalks above the foliage for most of the year.
Geranium
To keep your geraniums flowering all year they need to be dead-headed. Once blooms are spent, remove them with clean secateurs. Geraniums come in many different colours and grow best in warm climates.
Anigozanthos ‘Kangaroo Paw’
Noted for their tall, colourful flowers, Kangaroo Paw have very long flowering periods. In particular the ‘Gold Velvet’ variety is known to flower all year in warmer climates.
Penstemon
Commonly seen in the Cottage garden, Penstemon are tall, heavily flowering perennial plants that attract many beneficial birds and bees to the garden. These beautiful flowers appear for at least 3 months of the year and in warmer climates can still hold flowers during some weeks of winter.
Alyssum
A gorgeous, low growing and heavily flowering perennial shrub, which is perfect for borders, pots & containers. Alyssum are low maintenance and will be seen flowering almost all year in warmer climates and for at least 3 months in cooler climates.
