The Best New Annual Flowers of 2024
January 16th, 2024
A super-cold-hardy dusty miller, a double-award-winning purple-blooming agapanthus, and a whole new type of succulent are among a slew of interesting new annual flowers debuting in the 2024 growing season.
Semponium ‘Diamond’ is one of the entries in a whole new type of plant called Surrreal semponiums.
Credit: Monrovia
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 2024 appeared last Tuesday, Jan. 9. The best new perennial flowers of 2024 will post next Tuesday, Jan. 23, and the best new trees and shrubs of 2024 is scheduled for Jan. 30.
Some of the following 14 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:
What do you get when you cross a cold-hardy hens-and-chicks plant (Sempervivum) with a tender Aeonium?
British breeder Daniel Michael managed to do just that and came up with a new cross called “semponium” that offers a range of interesting leaf colors and formations.
Succulent fans and those looking to try anything new and different will love this new five-variety series named Surreal, which is debuting in the U.S. this spring.
Semponiums blend the glossy, colorful leaves of Aeonium with the rosette habit and equally colorful leaves of hens-and-chicks.
“They are amazing, huge, colorful succulents that are more hardy than traditional Aeonium,” says Monrovia plant selections manager Georgia Clay, who rates Surreal semponiums as her favorite new annuals of 2024.
Although semponiums are cold-hardier than Aeonium (which are grown as houseplants or annual pot plants in Pennsylvania), they’re not as cold-tough as hens-and-chicks (perennials in Pennsylvania). They’ll be sold as Zone 8 annuals and can be over-wintered here inside as houseplants.
The five varieties include ‘Sienna’ (14 to 16 inches tall with red leaves), ‘Vortex’ (10 to 12 inches tall with a spiraled rosette of dark outer leaves and neon-green centers), ‘Destiny’ (16 to 18 inches tall with reddish-black leaves), ‘Diamond’ (10 to 12 inches tall with bright green leaves that have red edges), and ‘Mrs. Frosty’ (10 to 12 inches tall with narrower brownish-pink leaves).
Plants are deer resistant, grow in full sun to part shade, and like most succulents, don’t need a lot of water.
Agapanthus Blackjack has unusual dark-purple flowers.
Credit: Concept Plants
A plant that earned 2023 Plant of the Year honors at last year’s Chelsea Flower Show in London – and a People’s Choice award in 2024 National Garden Bureau Green Thumb voting – is another interesting British import coming to U.S. gardens this spring.
Agapanthus Black Jack is a strappy-leafed plant that produces striking lily-like dark purple flowers atop sturdy stems.
In the South, agapanthus is a durable, evergreen, drought-tough plant that comes back year after year. It’ll be sold as a perennial as part of the Southern Living Plant Collection in Zones 8 and up.
In Pennsylvania, Black Jack is better suited as a summer-flowering pot centerpiece that can be overwintered dormant in an unheated garage or basement.
What’s unusual about this agapanthus is that the flowers are so dark purple that they open from black buds and border on black at first – different from the more common blue or white shades of agapanthus (sometimes known as African lily or lily-of-the-Nile).
Black Jack grows about 20 inches tall, does best in part sun, and is deer resistant. Note that agapanthus is toxic to humans and pets if eaten.
Dusty millers – long grown for their silvery foliage – are sold in our area as frost-hardy annuals. But this new cousin from Darwin Perennials is supposedly tough enough to survive all winter in Harrisburg’s Zone 7a climate.
Centaurea Silver Swirl is a colorful-leaf annual that could turn out to be a perennial.
Credit: Darwin Perennials
That attribute was enough to earn it a 2023 Retailer’s Choice award at last summer’s AmericanHort Cultivate industry show as a plant with the potential to become a garden-center best-seller.
Technically a species known as Centaurea ragusina, Silver Swirl looks almost identical to classic dusty millers, except with thicker and wavier leaf edges.
Ashcombe Farm and Greenhouses co-owner Kerri Laudig likes that trait as well as the silvery leaf color. She names Silver Swirl as her favorite new annual of 2024.
“It’s a great alternative to dusty miller,” Laudig says. “It will add contrast and texture to any container.”
Ashcombe’s plans to sell the plant as an annual, but if you don’t yank it at season’s end, it’s possible it’ll overwinter to give you a free sequel – especially if planted in a protected spot in the ground.
Plants grow 10 inches tall, ideally in full sun, and are drought-tough and rabbit-resistant.
Petchoa Caliburst Yellow is a heavy bloomer with vibrant yellow-gold flowers.
Credit: PanAmerican Seed
Petchoas are a cross of petunias and calibrachoa. The break-through with PanAmerican Seed’s ‘Caliburst Yellow’ is that it’s the first petchoa to be grown from seed as opposed to cuttings from a parent plant.
That trait alone was enough to earn the variety the 2023 Industry’s Choice Medal of Excellence from the Greenhouse Grower trade magazine. But the magazine also was impressed with ‘Caliburst Yellow’s’ vibrant two-tone yellow flowers and its cold tolerance.
As with most petchoas, ‘Caliburst Yellow’ has a trailing but compact habit and a height of six to 10 inches, making it an ideal choice for hanging baskets and large pots.
It’ll do best in full sun to light shade.
Petchoa EnViva Pink
EnViva Pink is another new petchoa that performed well enough in national trials last year to earn one of the five 2024 All-America Selections national awards for new annuals.
AAS judges especially liked the variety’s heavy bloom of large, bright-pink flowers with yellow throats.
“The awesome bright hot-pink color contrasts really well with the yellow throat… absolutely stunning,” the judges wrote.
Introduced by Selecta One North America, EnViva Pink grows 12 to 14 inches tall, has good heat tolerance, bounces back well after a rain, and is ideal in containers or hanging baskets, ideally in full sun.
Celosia Burning Embers is an award-winner distinctive for its bronze, pink-veined leavesl.
Credit: All-America Selections
Celosia Burning Embers
This celosia with the bronze, pink-veined leaves is the second national All-America Selections award-winner for 2024.
Besides the attractive foliage, Burning Embers had the largest and longest-lasting flowers of all the celosias trialed, AAS judges said.
Plants grow a stocky eight to nine inches tall, and the pollinator-friendly pinkish-red plumes poke up another few inches throughout summer.
Introduced by Sakata Ornamentals, Burning Embers is heat- and humidity-tough, doesn’t need dead-heading, flowers best in full sun, and does equally well in the ground or in pots.
Geranium Big EEZE Pink Batik
The unusual mosaic flower color of this new Dummen Orange hybrid geranium is what earned Pink Batik its 2024 All-America Selections award.
Geranium Pink Batik has an unusual mosaic flower color.
Credit: All-America Selections
AAS judges called the two-tone pink flowers “absolutely beautiful and plentiful.”
Plants grow about 18 inches tall and produce up to 100 blooms per season, especially when the spent clusters are dead-headed after they brown.
Pink Batik is heat-tough, has dark green leaves, and is best geared to growing in pots in either full sun or part shade.
Impatiens Solarscape XL Pink Jewel
Just about all new impatiens have been bred to avoid the devastating downy mildew disease, and this fourth 2024 AAS winner with the satiny-pink flowers is no exception.
Pink Jewel is also seed-grown, meaning it can be produced less expensively than the cutting-grown varieties that typically cost $4 or more in one-plant pots.
AAS judges liked Pink Jewel for its “strong flowering, good bloom size, and nice habit.”
Plants grow a mounding 12 inches tall.
Introduced by PanAmerican Seed, Pink Jewel grows in most any light from full sun to full shade and performs well in the ground or in pots or hanging baskets.
Marigold Siam Gold has huge golden flowers on stocky, no-flop plants.
Credit: All-America Selections
This stocky new marigold with the big golden flowers is the year’s fifth AAS national annual-flower winner.
Among the traits that earned Siam Gold AAS honors: sturdy stems (no staking needed), flowers held above the foliage for good visibility, uniform growth, lots of blooms throughout the season, and excellent heat- and drought-resistance.
Plants grow about 20 inches tall, ideally in full sun, and are hardly ever bothered by deer, bunnies, or groundhogs.
Introduced by Thai Home Seeds, Siam Gold also makes a good cut flower. Blooming is best when spent blooms are dead-headed.
Cuphea Sweet Talk
Pollinator-attracting plants are all the rage lately, and this new three-color series of cuphea offers that trait in an annual that few people know or grow.
Cuphea Sweet Talk Pink offers a different twist from the usual cast of annual flowers.
I test-grew Sweet Talk Deep Pink last summer and was impressed both by the delicate beauty of the flowers and by how long they lasted – into October, beyond the season’s first light frost.
My plants grew a bushy 14 inches tall and added something different to the usual lineup of geraniums, petunias, and zinnias. A mid-summer cutback kept the growth compact and stimulated a good second round of bloom.
Introduced by PanAmerican Seed, the Sweet Talk series also includes a lavender bloomer (Sweet Talk Lavender Splash) and the market’s only red cuphea (Sweet Talk Red).
The varieties can be grown from seed, they’re disease-resistant, and they grow best in full sun, either in containers or the ground.
The Dianthus Capitan series offers good cut flowers.
Credit: Selecta One
Selecta One’s new seven-color dianthus series with the bicolor blooms was good enough to earn Greenhouse Grower magazine’s 2023 Readers’ Choice Medal of Excellence award.
Geared mainly for containers, Capitan plants have larger flowers than the norm for dianthus, good fragrance, and “novelty colors of pink-and-purple bicolor blooms,” the magazine says.
Choices include: Magnifica (pinkish-lavender), Pink Eye (pink with white edges), Purple Frost (magenta-pink with white edges), Purple and White (dark purple with white splotches and edges), Red White Edge (red with white edges), White and Pink (white with dark-pink edges), and White and Purple (white with light-purple designs).
Plants grow 12 to 18 inches tall in full sun to light shade.
Lantana PassionFruit is a good hanging-basket plant that’s also attractive to pollinators.
Credit: Ball FloraPlant
Lantana PassionFruit
Here’s another pollinator-attracting flower that Ball Horticultural Co.’s Katie Rotella singles out as her favorite new annual debuting from Ball FloraPlant.
Rotella says lantana PassionFruit is “the perfect plant habit for hanging baskets because of its vigorous trailing structure. Plus, its blooms attract butterflies and other pollinators. Best of all, it never cycles out of flower.”
PassionFruit produces multi-colored flower clusters of pink, yellow, and red.
Plants grow 12 to 16 inches tall and flower best in full sun.
Petunia Amazonas Plum Cockatoo
It’s hard to be innovative with petunias given the gazillions of existing options, but the breeders at Danziger managed to come up with something different in this tri-color variety, which features dark purple throats and veins on white petals that are green and ruffled at the tips.
Petunia Amazonas Plum Cockatoo has novel three-tone flower coloring.
Credit: Danziger Flower Farm
Amazonas Plum Cockatoo is showy and unusual enough that it won a 2024 National Garden Bureau Green Thumb Award in the People’s Choice category.
Plants grow a mounding 12 to 14 inches tall and are best used in pots and hanging baskets. They’ll do well in full sun to light shade.
Petunia Blanket Silver Surprise
Last but not least, this new milliflora-type petunia with the multi-colored blooms was gorgeous enough to earn Krystal Snyder’s nod as the best annual flower among the hundreds trialed in last summer’s Penn State Trial Gardens in Lancaster County.
Snyder, the Trial Gardens’ interim director, liked Greenfuse Botanicals’ Blanket Silver Surprise for its flower power and mix of bloom colors, which can include white, silver, lavender, purple, and pink.
“It’s just a great all-around plant,” says Snyder. “I think it would be great on its own or in a combo.”
Silver Surprise has a mounding habit, stays under a foot tall, and performs well in full sun to light shade.
Read George’s post on best new annual flowers of 2023