‘papaya’ petunia plus: updated annual slideshow

ME? I STICK TO MY STORY: CONSISTENCY! So here it is, time once again for planting up pots, but I’m stuck on my same color theme–hot, hot, hot. I’m working with an expanded palette of sunny-colored annuals gathered at the garden centers, including a very sexy new-ish petunia called ‘Potunia Papaya,’ from German breeder Dummen-Red Fox, above. Forgive its rain-splattered blossoms, and other still-in-their-flats snapshots that I added to the show in these “before” shots. Bring on the heat and some sunshine, and they will grow.

I blame my orange house trim for my obsession with vivid colors, but what about you–how do you choose what you’ll bring home to pot up? What’s your container-garden color palette this year? Any new plants to recommend?

Click on the first thumbnail to start the show, and toggle from slide to slide with the arrows on your keyboard, or the ones beside each caption. The newest photos are in the bottom row, the 2011 update, but I’m growing a lot of the ones from 2010 again, too.

: THE 2010 REPORT: It’s getting hot, hot, hot around here with the onset of summer, and the plant palette is heating up, too. This is only my second year with Anagallis ‘Wildcat Mandarin,’ and as an unexpectedly colored form of froth to spill out of pots it is quite the creature. This time I put it at the feet of my very large Brugmansia, in a giant pot.

: You can see the purple-blue “eyes” of each flower if you look closely; there’s an entirely blue-flowered form as well (and quite vivid blue at that, called ‘Wildcat Blue’), but it’s the colors of fire I’m after this year.

: I love some of the lantanas I’m seeing in the market now, including Luscious Citrus Blend, whose flower clusters combine red and orange and even some yellow. This heat-lover is beloved by hummingbirds and butterflies, and the only downside (as I don’t have a whitefly problem here typically) is that I always manage to break a branch or two en route home from the garden center, as these are brittle plants. No matter, they are also lusty growers, so it’s soon replaced.

: Speaking of brittle plants…handle with care! I started growing Calibrachoa soon after they came out in the early 1990s, and I see a lot of improvement in their form and the number of flowers. I have to say I wish I could keep better track of which ones I like best, but they’re evolving fast. This year the only orange one I could find locally was ‘Dreamsicle’ in the Superbells series; my favorite ‘Terra Cotta’ (called a Million Bells) eluded me.

: A girl has to have some zinnias, and this year I have forsaken my standard tall orange Benary’s Giants for the popular foot-tall ‘Profusion’ kind of the same color. The plants are said to spread 15 inches wide and cover themselves in flowers. I put a half-dozen or so in a block among the vegetables just to see, and hopefully snip some small-scale bouquets.

: The non-variegated form of the Fusion series of impatiens was a keeper last year, so this time I tried some of the ‘Peach Frost’ with gold-edged leaves, too, for a big bowl in half-day sun.

: I think I made a tactical error when I included this new-to-me scrambler or climber, Pereskia godseffiana ‘Lemon Vine,’ with the impatient; I think it wants more sun to really show off its fleshy, sherbert-colored leaves. This one may soon have a home in a different pot…like out I go to rescue it now.

: A standby here for adding yellow to pots (or for a big bowl all to itself) is Oxalis vulcanicola, which will soon have lots of small, screaming yellow blooms as well. The foliage will take on reddish tones as the season evolves.

: I can’t forget about my hot-hot-hot beloved begonias, including ‘Bonfire,’ a variety of tuberous B. boliviensis.

: ‘Bonfire’ has a slightly less fiery cousin, ‘Bellfire,’ though I wouldn’t call it tame, exactly.

: And then we move from orange to red, and to one of my top two begonias for “annual” use: ‘Dragon Wing Red.’ This plant gets big (maybe a foot and a half tall and wide) and seems to tolerate sun or shade (in sun the leaves take on a redder cast).

: If it’s fire you want then I guess this petunia delivers. I have probably grown petunias all of about three times in my life, but this one really screamed out to me at the garden center. It’s a Surfinia type, and obviously it’s red.

: 2011 UPDATES: In 2011, I fell in love with a new-ish petunia called ‘Potunia Papaya,’ from the German breeder Dummen-Red Fox. Forgive the rain-splattered early flowers in this photo, but I am holding high expectations for ‘Papaya’ and more orange genetics in petunias in general.

: Not even open yet, but you get the idea: For a semi-shady spot I wanted some coral flowers, and Fuchsia ‘Gartenmeister Bonstedt’ will provide, along with foliage that’s a nice suede-like finish on top and infused with purple tones underneath.

: An old favorite among fancy-leaf pelargoniums is ‘Vancouver Centennial,’ with chartreuse and maroon scalloped leaves and hot coral flowers. (Again, forgive early season shot of young plants.)

: I love pineapple sage, a big, beautiful plant, and this golden form (probably Salvia elegans ‘Golden Delicious’) will be great in a whiskey-barrel sized pot (or the ground). It might get red blooms ultra-late in the season, just before frost takes it out.

: I have grown this verbena, the peach color from the Lanai series, a few times and love it. Each flower in the grouping starts out darker peach and gradually fades, for this multicolored effect.

: Verbena Lanai Peach in detail

: I almost won’t buy these double-flowered impatiens because of the hideous name of the series, Rockapulco, but this is Dark Orange, and I couldn’t resist.