Want a stunning early spring garden? Learn which spring flowers to plant for the earliest color and a beautiful, long-lasting display.
Tired of winter’s drabness? Spring arrives with an explosion of color! Imagine your garden bursting with blooms from the moment the ground thaws. To achieve this continuous, visually stunning display with minimal effort, choosing the right early-season flowers is crucial. Let’s discover the best options for abundant color, including cool-season annuals you can plant now. Here are some of my personal favorites to inspire you.
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How to Plant a Colorful Early Spring Garden
If you’re a gardening enthusiast who eagerly anticipates the arrival of spring, you’re in luck! One effective strategy to achieve a constantly changing and vibrant display in your garden is by incorporating a diverse mix of early-season flowering annuals, bulbs, perennials, and shrubs.
By mixing it up, something will always be growing, changing, and blooming, which makes it more exciting to walk the gardens. Follow these tips to grow an easy-care garden that blooms with something new and exciting each day.
Create an Extended Bloom Period with Spring Flowers
By incorporating a mix of early-season flowering annuals, bulbs, perennials, and shrubs in your garden, you can create a prolonged bloom period that lasts for weeks to months. Because think about it, if you only grow one type of plant, you are limited in bloom time specific to that variety.
Cool Season Annuals
Early-season flowering annuals, such as pansies, violas, nemesia, and ranunculus can start blooming as early spring, providing a burst of color when other plants are still waking up from their winter slumber.
Spring Flowering Bulbs
Spring flowering bulbs such as daffodils, crocuses, hyacinths, and tulips, also bloom early in the season. When planted in fall, these pretty spring bloomers are no work at all in the spring because they just do their thing.
Perennials
Planting perennials can provide spring flowers year after year with minimal work for you. Some of my favorites include Hellebores, Myostotis, Virginia Bluebells, Dicentra, and Brunnera.
Early Flowering Shrubs
But don’t overlook the value of flowering shrubs because they make a great visual impact in the landscape too. Look for plants like forsythia, spirea, viburnum and lilacs.
Having a diverse mix of plants with varying bloom times ensures that you’ll have something new blooming in your garden almost every day, creating a visually stunning and ever-changing display.
Plant for Continuous Color
Another benefit of incorporating a variety of early-season flowering plants in your garden is that you can enjoy a wide range of colors and textures throughout the season. Spring flowering bulbs, annuals, perennials, and shrubs come in a plethora of hues, ranging from bright and bold to soft and pastel, allowing you to create a stunning color palette in your garden.
When planting your garden, carefully select spring flowers and plants with complementary colors and textures so you can create an eye-catching display that evolves as the season progresses, keeping your garden interesting and visually appealing.
Plant With Diversity
Planting diverse early-season annuals, perennials, and shrubs boosts garden diversity. This attracts pollinators, helps manage weeds and pests organically, and can improve yields depending on your plants, leading to a more balanced ecosystem.
Create Lots of Garden Interest
Create lots of garden interest and intrigue by adding a mix of early-season spring flowers like annuals, bulbs, perennials, and shrubs to your garden. As each plant blooms at different times and in different ways, it adds depth and dimension to your garden, making it more visually appealing.
Varying plant heights, textures, and colors create a dynamic garden landscape, drawing the eye to different areas. This ever-changing beauty offers daily surprises and encourages exploration of new blooms.
Be Creative with Spring Flowers
Get creative and plant a diverse mix of early-season flowering plants in your garden. With various plants blooming at different times, you can experiment with diverse combinations, design ideas, and garden themes.
You can create themed areas in your garden, such as a butterfly garden with early-season flowering plants that attract butterflies, or a cottage garden with a mix of annuals, perennials, and shrubs for a relaxed and informal look. The possibilities are endless.
My Favorite Early Spring Flowering Bulbs
Spring flowering bulbs are a fantastic addition to any garden, not only for their stunning display of blooms but also for the minimal effort required from the gardener to achieve a beautiful floral show. There are lots of beautiful bulbs to choose from that bloom at all different times from very early spring until early summer.
Even the same flower has different varieties with varying bloom times. So you can get an amazing display of color and blooms for an extended time from just one type of flower.
Plant in the Fall for a Stunning Spring Garden Display
What I love most about spring blooming bulbs is that they should be planted in the fall, making them pretty low maintenance for spring. Once the warmer spring temperatures arrive, these bulbs emerge from the ground and bloom without requiring much attention from the gardener.
Another key benefit of spring bulbs is their reliable return each year, ensuring consistent early garden color. (If your spring flowering bulbs failed to bloom or don’t return, you can troubleshoot what happened and how to fix it here.)
Plus, these bulbs have the ability to survive and thrive in the garden for many years with minimal care. This means that once you plant them, you can enjoy their beautiful blooms year after year without having to replant them annually, saving you money, time, and effort.
Beyond their low maintenance, spring bulbs offer diverse colors, shapes, and sizes, allowing for personalized and stunning floral displays. From bold tulips to cheerful daffodils and delicate crocuses, countless easy-care options suit any style. Here are some of my favorites.
- Crocus
- Daffodils
- Hyacinths
- Tulips
- Grape Hyacinths
Why Planting Spring Flowering Bulbs in the Fall is Important
When it comes to spring flowers, planting bulbs in the fall is key to ensure they bloom at the right time. Plants such as tulips, daffodils, crocuses, and hyacinths need a period of chill time during winter to initiate the flowering process.
So it’s important to get them in the ground before winter so they have enough time to get that chill before they bloom in spring. I usually plant mine here in gardening zone 6a in late October.
When planting, keep in mind that bulbs should be planted in well-drained soil and at the appropriate depth. So be sure to follow the specific planting instructions for each type of bulb to ensure optimal results and a stunning spring display.
But what if you didn’t plant them in the fall?
All is not lost because you can easily purchase them in spring at the nursery in full bloom. They will just cost a little more and likely not bloom as long this year. But the good news is, they should return again next year.
About Cold Tolerant Annuals that Flower
When spring arrives and the nursery starts stocking up on annuals, some of the first you’ll see are cold-tolerant varieties like pansies and ranunculus. Cold-tolerant flowering annuals are specially adapted to withstand chillier temperatures, allowing you to plant them before the first frost in fall or early spring. By doing so, you can get a head start on your spring garden and enjoy early blooms as the weather starts to warm up.
Some popular options for cold-tolerant annual flowers include Pansies, Violas, Snapdragons, Sweet Peas, Larkspur, and Sweet Alyssum, among others.
Cold tolerant annuals are capable of tolerating cooler temperatures, often continuing to bloom even when the weather is still chilly. They come in a variety of colors, providing a splash of vibrancy to your garden during the early spring season.
When selecting cold-tolerant flowering annuals, be sure to check the hardiness rating for your specific zone and choose varieties that are known for their ability to withstand colder temperatures. While they are generally colder tolerant, a seriously deep freeze can take them out so always keep your eye on the weather so you can cover them with a frost blanket at night if you have to.
My Favorite Early Blooming Perennials
Perennials are an excellent choice for an everblooming, vibrant, and colorful spring garden display. Once established, perennials come back year after year, providing a reliable source of blooms in your garden with minimal work for you. This makes them a great option for busier gardeners that don’t want to replant new every year.
Perennials also come in a wide variety of colors, sizes, and shapes, allowing you to choose the perfect plants to suit your desired aesthetic and property conditions.
Of course, some are easier than others to grow. Here are some of my favorite easy-care early spring-blooming perennials.
- Lenten Rose (Hellebores)
- Myostotis (Forget-Me-Nots)
- Creeping Phlox
- Dicentra (Bleeding Heart)
- Lungwort
- Epimedium
- Brunnera
- Virginia Bluebells
My Favorite Early Blooming Shrubs
Another great way to add early-season color and vibrance is to add flowering shrubs. These shrubs often burst into bloom with showy flowers before the leaves emerge, creating a stunning focal point in your garden.
Flowering shrubs come in a range of colors, from bright yellows to pinks, purples, and whites, adding a burst of vibrancy and visual interest to your garden.
When selecting early spring blooming shrubs, consider factors such as the hardiness for your zone, the mature size of the shrub, and the available space in your garden. Because if you don’t, they will require more pruning and care than you may want to do.
Some of my favorite early-blooming shrubs include:
- Forsythia
- Spirea
- Viburnum
- Lilac
- Azalea
- Rhododendron
- Ninebark
- Elderberry
Final Thoughts About the Best Spring Flowers For Your Garden
Creating a truly captivating early spring garden with a continuous display and abundant blooms is within every gardener’s reach. By thoughtfully selecting a diverse palette of bulbs, annuals, perennials, and shrubs, you can orchestrate a symphony of color and texture that unfolds week after week.
Remember, a little planning in the fall and a focus on layering bloom times are your keys to unlocking a garden that bursts with life. Embrace the joy of those early blossoms – they are a promise of the vibrant season to come and a reward for your the work you put in before the season begins.
What are your favorite spring flowers? Have you planted these in your garden yet? I would love to know more in the comments below.
To learn more about spring flowering bulbs, check out this article from Rutgers Cooperative Extension.
Thank you so much for following along.
Enjoy a beautiful day! xo
