Four Seasons in the Year Gardening with flowering annuals in the South can be viewed as both a challenge and an opportunity. Our good friends in the northern states have a relatively short season. Cool -season annuals are planted in early spring to enjoy until the weather gets too hot. Then warm- season annuals are planted once the chance of frost has passed, often May to June.
Plants grow and flower through the summer and the season ends with the first hard frost in the fall.
Southerners, and those transplanted from northern areas, try to replicate this planting regime, often with less than desirable results. The opportunity for southern gardeners is the potential to have annuals in flower throughout most of the year. The challenge however is to select groups of annuals that are adaptable to climatic conditions during each of the different seasons of the year. Most of us recognize that our summers are long, hot and humid while our winters vary from moderate to cold, with frequent periods of rain. Spring and fall weather can vary with moderately warm days, cool, crisp nights and periods of rain or drought.