Long Lasting Flowers for your Southern California Garden

Written by Kelsey W.

Southern California’s eternal green landscape means that we get to enjoy our gardens even when much of the rest of the country is buried in snow. However, getting long-lasting blooms and lots of flowers from your garden does take a little planning.

Some flowers last just a single day, but other flowers may last weeks. Some plants even have leaves that mimic flowers, which means you can enjoy the look of flowers for as long as the plant is happy and thriving.

Let’s explore some of the beautiful plants you can choose for your Southern California yard that will offer you days or even weeks of beautiful flowers for a fun and cheerful home.

Plants With Flowers That Last a Long Time

Many plants that are popular additions to Southern California gardens have naturally long-lasting blooms, so planting them in your garden is an easy way to enjoy lots of flowers. Some of these plants even have very long-lasting blooming seasons, so you’ll get to enjoy lots of flowers for a long time.

One very popular flowering plant that produces big bunches of colorful blooms is the geranium, which loves growing in Southern California. The geranium is supposed to bloom from spring to fall, but some geranium plants, especially when they’re quite established, will bloom for most of the year.

Another plant you’ll commonly see around Southern California is the hydrangea plant, which has big bushy groups of flowers that last for weeks before they start to fade. The only drawback to hydrangeas is that they don’t have a year-round blooming season, so sometimes the plants are simply big green bushes.

A third plant with long-lasting blooms you may want to add to your Southern California garden is the zinnia, which loves growing in SoCal and actually has a pretty easy “hack” for encouraging additional blooms. Zinnias are wonderfully colorful and often bloom all the way from very early summer to well into fall.

To encourage them to keep blooming as long as possible. You’ll always want to remove the old flowers as soon as they start to fade away, which will encourage the plant to immediately start making a new flower. Once you cut back a dead bloom, you should have another flower within a week.

Plants With a Long Blooming Season

The temperate climate in Southern California does encourage long growing seasons for many plants. However, some flowers do natively have long blooming seasons anyway, which makes them quite happy to bloom for half the year or more when they get to live in someone’s yard in SoCal.

One great option for flowers that will greet you for about half the year is the coneflower, which usually starts blooming sometime in the summer and keeps blooming all the way through fall. However, SoCal coneflowers actually start to bloom even before the official start of summer.

Coneflowers are also quite happy to withstand the summer heat all throughout the hotter months of the year and into the fall. Even better, the blooms on coneflower plants last a long time, too, meaning you’re getting the best of both worlds: long-lasting blooms and a blooming season that lasts months.

The cheerful coreopsis flower is another beauty that will brighten your yard for months on end. The flowers sort of look like daisies, and some kinds start blooming in the spring, with many continuing to bloom all the way into the fall, especially when temperatures remain warm.

A water-wise option for continuous color in your garden is a bush called catmint, which will give you blooms all over the plant from spring to fall, especially if you continuously trim the plant throughout the growing season to encourage more flowers to grow.

Plants With Leaves That Look Like Flowers

Not all plants have green leaves, and some actually have leaves that sort of resemble flowers, which means you don’t need to worry about deadheading and trimming the plant so often. Simply removing a spent leaf here and there is often enough to keep the plants happy.

One of the cool features of coleus in Southern California is that it grows all year here, unlike in colder climates, where it goes away for the winter. Coleus is one of the easiest ways to have a really colorful yard all year long because the plant will continue growing leaves all year.

Another plant with beautiful, colorful leaves is the croton, which is more of a tropical plant but can live happily in Southern California in certain conditions. They usually need a break from the hot afternoon sun and need an extra watering here and there when it’s particularly dry. They also dislike frost.

If you’re looking to create some color in your yard in the cooler months of the year, ornamental cabbage is an ideal option, especially since it looks like giant flowers. Technically, you can eat ornamental cabbage, but it’s not the tastiest variety out there, so it’s best to leave it alone to look beautiful in your garden rather than make it part of your dinner table feast.

The ever-present bougainvillea of Southern California is another plant with leaves that look like flower petals that can offer some serious color to your yard, especially if you choose the vibrant orange or magenta color. Just make sure you’re ready to engage in some maintenance with the plant because it can grow with wild abandon when left to its own devices.

Another super-popular and colorful plant in Southern California that also happens to love the weather is the bird of paradise. The “flowers” that grow from this plant are actually called “bracts,” which are leaves that are often colorful and protect the actual flowers growing on the plant. Bracts sort of act like the petals of a flower, but they’re actually just special leaves.

Encouraging Longer-Lasting Blooms in All Your Plants

One of the biggest reasons flowers wilt and fade on plants is that the heat becomes a little too much, and the plant allows the blooms to die in favor of putting its energy into keeping its green parts lush and vibrant.

You can sometimes prevent this from happening by paying some extra attention to your flowering plants. They might benefit from a little extra water during particularly hot spells, or you might plant them in a space where they’ll get a little more shade in the heat of the day.

Conversely, when you’re putting together a winter garden and want long-lasting blooms, making sure your plants get as much sun as possible is key and can encourage blooms and growth. You can even put winter plants in pots and move them around your yard to maximize the sun they receive.

Another way to encourage blooms to stick around is to remove fading blooms, especially when the plant has new flowers coming along. The plant will stop putting energy into keeping its old blooms alive and will focus on its new blooms, ensuring they last as long as possible.

You can also make sure you’re encouraging your plant to grow its flowers as beautifully as possible by feeding your plants, especially while they’re flowering. Fertilizer that grows bigger flowers usually has a greater amount of phosphorus in it than nitrogen, so you’ll see a bigger number in the middle when you look at the Nitrogen-Phosphorus-Potassium composition of the fertilizer.

But don’t worry too much about getting the NPK mixture just right for your flowers. Most fertilizer companies make it super easy by labeling their containers with whatever sort of plant they’ve designed the fertilizer to feed. Therefore, if you’re trying to grow lots of blooms, find a fertilizer that promises big flowers.

Fill Your Home with Beautiful Flowers from Green Thumb Nursery

There’s nothing like walking through your yard and seeing it filled with beautiful flowers, especially when many of those flowers are easy to grow and love the Southern California sunshine. If you’re looking for some beautiful plants and flowers to brighten your yard, make sure to stop by your local Green Thumb Nursery to get started on beautifying your yard, porch, home, or flower box.

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