7 Reasons Why Southerners Will Always Love Impatiens

The South has a love affair with flowering plants. From hydrangeas, gardenias, ranunculus, and azaleas to magnolias, crepe myrtles, and more—flowering flora abounds in yards across the South. Common impatiens (Impatiens walleriana) remain one of the most popular annual varieties for their easy-to-grow, low-maintenance care requirements, oh, and the mounds and mounds of blooms they produce. We're making a major case for adding a few impatiens to your garden, if you haven't already.

Impatiens Are Easy to Grow

Impatiens care is easy for the entry-level gardener. Just drop by your local nursery and pick up a half dozen to plant in your bed or container. No other flowering plant can take off quite as quickly as impatiens, showing off with piles of blooms from the minute they're planted. Impatiens typically grow nicely in shady or partly shady areas in rich, moist soil, and keep a tidy height of around a foot. SunPatiens hybrids can tolerate full sun, even on hot days.

If you want your work cut out for you, you might want to try your green thumb at germinating these otherwise easy-to-grow flowers. The soil temperature will have to remain a pretty consistent 75 degrees or else the seed could rot. Beyond that, the process includes utilizing the ideal soil mix, watering with hot water prior to sowing, and covering bed or pots with plastic wrap—it can get quite involved. For those reasons, the novice gardeners among us prefer to hop on over to the nearest garden shop to get our impatiens fix.

Impatiens Bloom Nonstop From Spring Until Frost

Impatiens will add constant color wherever they're planted after the last frost passes in spring until the first frost hits in fall. In frost-free areas, they will bloom year-round. As long as they are watered, impatiens just don't quit. If they start to get leggy and need to be pruned back, just pinch off the top 1/3 of growth, and they'll repay you with even more blooms—and without delay.

Impatiens Let You Know When They Need Watering

Traditional impatiens are shade lovers, but can handle a bit of sun as long as they're given plenty of water to make up for it. Our resident gardener, Steve Bender, explains that their drooping stems are an easy-to-spot indicator that it's time to water. If you have a sunny garden that is screaming for some easy color, hybrid impatiens are the way to go—Bender suggests the New Guinea hybrids for partly sunny gardens and SunPatiens for full sun.

Impatiens Are Winners for Window Boxes, Baskets, And Containers

Impatiens look beautiful in containers set all around your porch, patio, and garden. You can start by combining three to five in a large container set 6 inches apart. They start small but can grow quite bushy by the end of summer. If they start to get out of hand, simply pinch them down 4-5 inches to keep your plants trim and tidy. When planting in containers or window boxes, be sure to give them more water than you would if they were planted in ground.

Impatiens Come In Many Versions

New Guinea impatiens (I. hawkeri) have stiff, disease-resistant leaves that can be dark green, bronze, or variegated. Double-petaled impatiens varieties like 'Rosette' and 'Carousel' mimic petite roses—but these shady bloomers are in fact much easier to grow than traditional types. I. balsamina is another species that differs in appearance from flat-flowered impatiens. They are characterized by erect branches with cup-shaped flowers that are sometimes spotted. Blooms will appear either solitarily or in tidy clusters of two to three.

Impatiens Come In Just About Every Color

Can't quite decide? Why not try them all. According to Bender, impatiens come in just about every color variety but blue is uncommon. Pink, white, red, orange, and purple—there's an impatiens hue to match every landscape.

Impatiens Don't Need Deadheading

No need to clip off faded blooms—these flowering plants are self-groomers. The only reason you'll need to prune at all would be to reduce legginess. Otherwise they're good to grow all on their own with minimal intervention.

There you have it: Shade-loving impatiens are easy to grow, come in almost every color with flowers that range from flat to rosette, require minimal maintenance, bloom from spring until frost, and are versatile additions to your containers.