I'm looking for a good annual (maybe a perrenial) that only gets about 6 to 8 inches tall and it has to be of red flower, bright red like the american flag red stripe. . .any suggestions? Thanks, Lyn
Alpine geranium. (It's actually a Pelargonium.) Let it spread around like a ground cover. If you like, you can overwinter it indoors and use it again next year.
sorry it's taken me so long to reply to this (I had my gall bladder removed kinda unexpectedly so :-/) Anyway I don't want to do a petuna for sure and the geranium, how tall does it get? I'm going to have to look up the salvia I've not seen it (or if I have, I don't remember it by name. . .so far all I can find is dianthus (spelling is probably all wrong but I'm no where near it's card) They're nice but I'm worried they'll take over my design. . .anyway thanks for all of your input and we'll see where it takes me :) Lyn
Golly! Hope all goes well with you! How about portulaca? ---and you did spell dianthus correctly. My experience with dianthus is that it does OK for a couple of years---kinda does spread some---and then fizzles away. Previous suggestions (salvia and geranium) are good ones. Give us an idea of in what conditions your plants will be growing...full or partial sun? Hot? Wet? Dry? Take care---good to hear from you!
The trouble with Dianthus would be finding a true fire-engine red, if that's what you're looking for. The pigments in those plants (and actually in most red-flowered plants) tend to slide toward the purple-red end of the spectrum. The pigments in Pelargonium (i.e. geranium) in contrast usually produce more of a pure clear scarlet, tending slightly toward orange -- visually, en masse, they "read" as pure red. This is why geraniums tend to stand out from a garden composition while pinks and most other plants seem to flow together. Alpine geraniums are almost always grown as window-box or container plants, with a tendency to hang down and spread widely. If grown as a ground cover, they probably wouldn't get much taller than 6 or 8 inches, I should think.
