The Best New Annual Flowers of 2021

January 19th, 2021

   A showy new sweet potato vine, two heavy-blooming new begonias, and arguably the best yellow petunia yet top the list of interesting new annual flowers debuting in 2021.

   Growers, local garden centers, and other plant experts picked those and more for my four-part, best-new-plants series that I compile each January – a good month for gardeners to plan what to plant in the coming season.

   The article on best new edibles of 2021 appeared last Tuesday, Jan. 12. The best new perennial flowers of 2021 will post next Tuesday, Jan. 26, and the best new trees and shrubs of 2021 is scheduled for Feb. 2.

   Some of the following new annual flowers are available in seeds or plants online and in some plant catalogs. Most also will show up in plant form in local garden centers beginning in late April to early May.

   The details:

Sweet potato Sweet Caroline Medusa

   Ornamental sweet potato vines have become a popular vining annual for pots and hanging baskets because of their colorful leaves.

   New for 2021 is Sweet Caroline Medusa, a Proven Winners variety that adds the twist of very narrow leaves on a dense, bright-green plant.

   Chris Wallen, a grower for the wholesale-only Quality Greenhouses near Dillsburg, describes the leaves as “finger-like” and says Medusa can fan out nearly three feet. He picks it as his favorite new annual introduction.

   Sweet potatoes grow best in full sun, although they’ll grow well but less colorfully in fairly shady spots.

Begonia Sprint Plus Rose

   This new heavy-blooming wax begonia was one of Sinclair Adam’s two favorite new annual flowers of any kind in the 2020 Penn State Trial Gardens in Lancaster County.

   Adam, the Trial Gardens’ director, says Sprint Plus Rose is an “exceptional bloomer with a very uniform habit. It was the top-scoring begonia tested in sun.”

   Wax begonias also are versatile enough that they do well in shade – as well as any light between sun and shade. And they’re not a favorite of rabbits either.

   Sprint Plus Rose blooms non-stop all season until frost in a rosy-pink shade. Plants grow only six to eight inches tall and spread 10 to 12 inches wide.

Begonia Double Delight Blush Rose

   Jeanine Standard gets to see all of Proven Winners’ up-and-coming flowers, and the one she likes best for 2021 is a larger, double-petaled begonia that smells as good as it looks like it should smell.

   “Shade gardeners love begonias for their elegant, colorful blossoms but have long wished they had that once-elusive trait – a pleasant fragrance,” Standard says. “Double Delight Blush Rose begonias exude a sweet, citrus-like fragrance from their large, abundant, soft-pink blossoms on cascading stems all season.”

   This new variety is also more disease-resistant than most begonias, and it can tolerate nearly full-sun conditions – at least when temperatures don’t broil day after day like they did last July.

   Morning sun and afternoon shade is ideal for these beauties, which grow about a foot tall and slightly wider. They’re ideal for a shady pot.

Celosia Kelos Candela Pink

   This new flower with the pink plumes performed well enough in independent national testing that it earned a 2021 All-America Selections national award.

   One AAS judge compared celosia Kelos Candela Pink to the “Energizer Bunny” for its flowers that just kept coming and coming all season.

   The variety gets its name from the narrow, upright flowers that reminded breeders of a pink candle.

   Kelos Candela Pink grows about 30 inches tall – ideally in full sun to light shade – and makes an excellent cut or dried flower as well as a showy landscape annual.

Foliage celosia Sol

   Also new on the celosia front is a series grown for its foliage rather than flowers.

   The first two introductions in the Sol collection – Gekko Green and Lizzard Leaf – have bushy, two-toned foliage that looks a bit like a cross between coleus and ornamental cabbage.

   “Both expand the options for gardeners looking for sun-loving accent plants,” says Katie Rotella, a spokeswoman for PanAmerican Seed, which is introducing Sol celosias.

   Gekko Green has green-burgundy leaves, and Lizzard Leaf has burgundy-bronze coloring. They’re both ideal for pots, and both won 2021 Fleuroselect Gold Medal awards for their performance in European trials.

   The plants are mildew-resistant and grow about a foot tall and wide. The spiky flowers are a late-season after-thought.

Zinnia Profusion Red Yellow Bicolor

   This new zinnia in the compact, disease-resistant Profusion series was good enough to earn a 2021 AAS, best-of-the-best Gold Medal.

   Judges liked the color-changing attribute of this one. Flowers start as golden-yellow with a vibrant red center, then morph into softer shades of apricot, salmon, and dusty rose.

   Profusion Red Yellow Bicolor also was a heavy and consistent bloomer, showing color from planting to frost on foot-tall plants. It flowers best in full sun.

   As with all zinnias, this new award-winner is easy to start by direct-seeding into the garden. Profusion transplants are also widely available from garden centers in May.

Zinnia ‘Holi Orange’

   Another compact, mildew-resistant, heavy-blooming zinnia worth seeking out is this new color in AmeriSeed’s Holi series.

   ‘Holi Orange’ produces large, double-petaled, medium-orange flowers on plants that grow only about a foot tall.

   It was one of the top-performing annual flowers in last year’s Cornell University trials and looks to be every bit as showy as the series’ two previous super-bloomers, ‘Holi Scarlet’ and ‘Holi Yellow.’

Petunia Supertunia Mini Vista Indigo

   The whole Supertunia line of petunias is arguably the best on the market. Supertunia Minis are more compact than the standard Supertunias, growing only 10 to 12 inches tall with a spread of 18 to 24 inches.

   Adam says Mini Vista Indigo was “the best petunia” in Penn State’s 2020 trials and rates it as one of his top two new annuals of any kind (along with the aforementioned begonia Sprint Plus Rose).

   He says Mini Vista Indigo is a very heavy bloomer all season long in a rich shade of bluish-purple.

   Plants are exceptionally heat-tough and perform best in full to light shade. Their trailing habit makes them perfect for pots and hanging baskets.

Petunia Bee’s Knees

   Petunias usually flower in soft, pastel colors such as purple and pink, but Bee’s Knees gives a warmer, brighter cream-and-yellow option.

   “The color is much stronger than other yellow petunias we’ve tested in previous years,” says Adam, who picks this as his second-favorite new petunia.

   Bee’s Knees is a heavy-blooming 2021 introduction from Ball FloraPlant that grows only about 10 inches tall but spreads nearly two feet across, making it a good choice for hanging baskets.

   It flowers best in full sun.

Petunia Midnight Gold

   Highland Gardens’ annuals/perennials manager Monica Gembusia picks another new petunia from Ball FloraPlant as her favorite new 2021 annual – the bicolor Midnight Gold variety.

   Gembusia says this new trailer is an eye-grabber for its velvety, double, deep-purple flowers with white edges that turn soft gold.

   Midnight Gold grows only about 10 inches tall but spreads two feet, making it ideal in sunny pots or baskets.

Petunia Headliner Electric Purple Sky and Crystal Sky

   A fourth new petunia choice to consider for 2021 is two new color versions in Selecta One’s Headliner series. This series is a novel one with polka-dotted flowers reminiscent of stars in the night sky.

   Electric Purple Sky is purple with white spotting, while Crystal Sky is bluish-lavender with white spotting.

   Both grow about 14 to 16 inches tall and about two feet across, ideally in full sun.

Bidens ‘Taka Tuka’

   Despite being compact, colorful, and fairly easy to grow, bidens are not a well known annual flower.

   That could change as more new varieties show up, including a particularly showy new Benary Seed series called ‘Taka Tuka,’ named for the gold coins in Pippi Longstocking’s land of Taka Tuka.

   Bidens grow only about eight inches tall and look a bit like super-short marigolds. They do equally well in sunny pots or in a sunny spot in the garden.

The Taka Tuka series comes in five colors – mostly bright ones of red, orange, and yellow bicolor blends.

Sunflower Tiger Eye Hybrid

   If you like the huge, bright flowers of sunflowers but don’t want the six-foot-tall height that usually goes along with them, here’s a newcomer that W. Atlee Burpee Co. senior product manager Venelin Dimitrov rates as his top new annual flower of any kind for 2021.

   Tiger Eye grows only 24 to 30 inches tall but produces up to eight large, five-inch-wide, yellow-red bicolor flowers per plant.

   “The blooming plants look balanced rather than top-heavy, thanks to their sturdy branching habit,” Dimitrov says.

   The short stature makes Tiger Eye ideal for container-growing, he adds.

    Sunflowers bloom best in full sun.