How to Select Bedding Plants for a North Florida Climate

Selecting the best bedding plants for your North Florida landscape gives you splashes of color around your property. There are numerous plants that grow well and are easy to maintain in a North Florida climate. Following is a guide to the types of plants that might do well in your flowerbeds.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Water
• Garden spot

1. Utilize the Agriculture Extension Agency in your area for their expertise in selecting bedding plants. This office can provide you with a list of all sorts of plants native to your area that will give you optimum color.

2. Choose bedding plants by their need of sun or shade according to where you want them. For shade, caladiums are a bulb plant that is green, and while it doesn't flower, it does come in color varieties like green/white, green/pink and green/red. Impatiens are a colorful succulent flowering plant at that will spread and loves early sun or partial shade. Petunias love full Florida sun.

3. Determine the levels of acid, alkaline and salt needed in the soil for the bedding plants you choose. For instance, azaleas grow well in partial shade with acidic soil (4.5 to 6.0 pH) that is organic and well drained. This colorful flowering plant will bloom twice a year for you.

4. Select bedding plants based on their size at maturity. Placing a plant that will grow to 5 feet tall in front of plants that will be only 2 feet tall will make your garden look awkward and not well thought out. Plant tall day lilies and varieties of zinnias behind petunias and especially the ground covering portulaca (moss rose).

5. Decide whether you want annual bedding plants that last only a season like begonias that love north Florida sun, but die off when it gets chilly outside. Perennial bedding plants like snapdragons and lilies will come back each year and bloom year after year.

Tips & Warnings

• Bedding plants that grow well in North Florida include geraniums, dianthus and pansies.
• Choose bedding plants that self-clean themselves. In other words, they drop their petals and leaves to provide their own mulch.
• Avoid using bedding plants for color around trees. Small plants cannot compete with a tree for water and there will likely be too much shade for bedding plants to grow.