Our top 7 red-flowered annuals

Originating from Asia Minor, this fast-growing annual can reach 60 cm tall by 30 cm wide in a season. Despite its delicate appearance, it forms a robust tuft of alternate leaves, lobed with narrow lobes and dentate margins, capable of arising from recently worked soils.

Poppies excel in wild gardens, cottage gardens, and low-maintenance spaces, easily creating waves of bright, uplifting flowers. Their presence is spectacular in borders, iris, the Shasta daisies, or the dancing foliage of the grasses.

Poet’s Carnation ‘Sooty’ stands out for its spectacular red and captivating black hues. This plant, with green leaves adorned with metallic red-tinged and black-tinged reflections and purple stems bearing flowers so deep red that they appear black in the sun, begins flowering in May. Its flowering can continue for up to two months if spent flowers are regularly removed.

Treated as a biennial due to its low hardiness, it forms a dense basal clump in the first year, with purple-black leaves elegant in winter. The flowering of ‘Sooty’, from May to July, offers red-brown flowers with pinker nuances, reputed for their vase life and spicy-sweet fragrance.

Easy to grow with little maintenance, the Poet’s Carnation ‘Sooty’ enriches any garden or cut-flower bouquet with its poetry and mystique. Ideal along borders or near entrances to enjoy its fragrance, it creates striking colour accents in the border, especially paired with the Black Ophiopogon, to the ‘Oxalis triangularis, to dark sedums, to the Pennisetum setaceum ‘Rubrum’. It is also suitable for container cultivation, with good drainage, regular watering and feeding.

The ‘Tangerine Slice’ can quickly reach 2 metres, with dark green foliage, smaller and darker than the classic varieties. Flowering from June to October, its tubular flowers 3–4 cm in diameter feature a dark purple eye that attracts pollinators, with colours evolving throughout the day.

Easy to grow in pots or in sunny garden soil, the Black-eyed Susan vine pairs elegantly with herbaceous clematis or serves as groundcover. It entwines with gladioli to energise borders and create a show in large hanging baskets, bringing a touch of originality and colour.

The Papaver rhoeas ‘Pandora’ is a poppy quite different from our modest, yet brilliant red poppy, offering large double flowers with crumpled petals, in a colour range extending from deep red to almost white pink and pale grey-pink. Each flower is unique, with varied patterns: variegated, flamed, mottled or speckled. These annual poppies, hardy and low-maintenance, thrive in full sun and tolerate poor soils, including heavy, calcareous and degraded soils.

‘Pandora’ is a spring-germinating selection, flowering in summer and dying after seed production, reaching 50 cm in height and 30 cm in breadth in a single season. Its slender stems and leaves lobed into narrow lobes characterise this plant, which yields a milky juice if the stem is broken. Flowering from June to August, it bears flowers with silky petals and slightly crumpled, in elegant shades of red, with a black-blue heart of stamens.

The Pandora poppy enhances wild gardens. Although ephemeral in bouquets, these flowers add undeniable charm to borders, accompanying the peonies or grasses. Ideal for vacant spaces or as a prelude to late-flowering blooms such as daylilies, the Pandora poppy enriches any sunny garden. For bouquets, sealing the cut stems helps prolong the flowers’ freshness.

The Begonia ‘Dark Elegance’ is an herbaceous annual derived from a series of recent hybrids, prized for its rapid growth, abundant flowering, compact and trailing habit, and bright colours. Reaching 30 cm tall by 40 cm wide, it bears from June through to the first frosts single and vibrant, wing-shaped flowers, against a backdrop of oblong, pointed leaves. This plant thrives in both partial shade and full sun, and tolerates climatic variations, from cool, wet summers to heatwaves.

The Begonia Summerwings ‘Dark Elegance’ is ideal for brightening up a range of containers such as planters, balcony boxes or hanging baskets. It pairs perfectly with Impatiens and lobelias, and finds its place in both showy borders and pots on a terrace, offering a touch of elegance and enduring colour.

The Scabiosa atropurpurea ‘Fire King’ is a highly floriferous annual, with a discreet and elegant habit, displaying red flowers on long, sturdy stems, perfect in cottage garden borders and then as cut flowers. Easy to grow in light soil, it self-seeds and adds a light touch to the garden, yet visually very present.

Dark purple scabious is a short-lived perennial, often grown as an annual. ‘Fire King’ is a cultivar selected for its sturdy flowering stems and inflorescences in a deep red with touches of white. It features deciduous, finely cut bright green foliage in a basal rosette. Generous, it produces up to 400 flowers of 5 cm in diameter per plant from July to October, reaching 70–80 cm in height. Very nectariferous, it blends well in small groups among grasses or larger flowers to which it adds its strong colour in small touches.

Harvest the flowers to encourage renewed flowering, or leave them to dry in place; they add a lot of charm to a winter display. Its blooms last a long time in a vase.