There are thousands of bedding plants to choose from when you’re planting your garden. So many colours, shapes, and sizes to choose from, even different types of bedding plants.
With so many choices it can be hard to decide what bedding plants to plant in your garden.
Luckily for you, we have a handpicked list of the best bedding plants out there, making it that much easier to fill your garden with colour. Make your garden the talk of the town with the most colourful, eye-catching bedding plants around.
Read on below for our 10 picks for the best bedding plants, or check out the quick list here:
The best bedding top ten
1. Geraniums
One of the most popular bedding plants, pelargoniums (better known as geraniums) are a staple of every garden. They bring a whole host of colours to your garden: white, pink, orange, red, and mauve.
They’re a great pick as they work in any part of your bedding. The bushy varieties work in your borders and beds, while the trailing types work in pots, containers, and baskets. Geraniums are a go-to bedding plant for any gardener.
2. Marigold
Unfussy plants, marigolds do well in most garden soils. Even in poor or dry soil, it’s a great easy-to-grow flower. Well suited to containers and borders, marigolds are fast-growing, low, bushy plants.
Their quick growth and daisy-like flower heads make them an excellent choice for bedding. Their profusions of aromatic flowers come in orange, cream, and yellow.
3. Begonias
Continuous colour throughout summer lands begonias a place on our list of best bedding plants. Flowering all season, begonias are also easy to care for and more than happy in shade.
A popular choice for lots of displays, by planting en-masse you can easily create a focal point in flower beds. They bloom bountifully in red, pink, rose, white, and bi-coloured flowers.
4. Petunias
Petunias bear masses of flowers, bringing a wealth of colour into your green space. There is a great variety of petunias to choose from, in colours, blooms, petal shapes, and fragrances.
Trailing and bushy varieties give you lots of options for your garden. The range of petunias, and their long flowering periods make them a popular choice in borders, containers, and baskets.
5. Cosmos
Superb border plants, cosmos’ upright flowers add height to your garden and look great when gathered. Happy in most ordinary soils, simple to grow, and easy to look after, cosmos is also a great low-effort bedding plant. Cosmos can even be used for cut flowers, fresh straight from your garden.
6. Snapdragons
Bring the dragon into your garden! Flowering from June to October, the butterfly-shaped snapdragons [antirrhinums] are a particularly bright flower. Great in containers or in borders, they are an easy plant to grow.
A classic cottage garden plant, they come in a range of sizes and colours to suit your garden’s style. Just to sweeten the deal, they’re loved by bees and come back every year!
7. Fuchsias
Flowering from mid-summer, fuchsias are adored for their hanging bell-shaped flowers. There are thousands of varieties of the bi-coloured flowers, coming in white, pink, magenta, purple, and red.
The range of styles makes fuchsia a great choice for bedding displays, pots, and borders. To top it off fuchsia are easy to grow, just give them a bit of shelter and some sunshine.
8. Lobelias
A classic bedding plant is Lobelia, with its low-growing and trailing varieties being the most popular. It works well as border edging, in hanging baskets, and containers.
Lobelia brings brilliant shades of blue to your garden, perfect for making your bedding stand out. Flowering in masses of tiny flowers, they also come in purple, white, red, pink, and lavender.
9. Sweet peas
The perfect plant to add fragrance to your garden, sweet peas smell as good as they look. They flower in a range of bright colours: white, pink, red, violet, and blue. They work great in a cottage garden, growing up garden obelisks or wigwams. Their dwarf variety is also an excellent option for beds and borders.
As a bonus, they also can be cut into gorgeous bunches of summer flowers!
10. Pansies
The colourful and eye-catching pansies are an ever-popular plant in pots and borders. Often bi-coloured, they come in blue, mauve, pink, purple, red, yellow, and white.
There’ is an enormous variety of pansies in different shapes, sizes, and markings. Flowering all year round, they’ll keep your garden full of colour.
With all those bedding plants to choose from, everyone will be able to paint their gardens with beautiful colours. Our top ten bedding plants cover a range of bedding schemes that can be mixed and matched to suit your garden. Whether you need to fill pots, beds, or hanging baskets, a combo of our top ten will see your garden blooming.
For all the info on when and how to plant your bedding plants and get your garden growing, visit our Primrose blog .