Plant Pansies for Season-Spanning Color

• Sunlight: Pansies perform best in full sun. If you want to stretch the season into warm weather, choose a site that’s partly shaded, like the edge of the woods, or a flower bed protected from hot afternoon sun.
• Soil: Pansies like moist, well-draining soil amended with organic matter. For the healthiest blooms, a low pH is preferred, anywhere in the 5.4 to 5.8 range. You can perform a soil test to determine the pH amendments needed for your soil. Sphagnum peat moss is typically added to make garden soil more acidic. An elevated soil bed is a good choice to keep pansies’ roots from getting too wet.
• Watering and fertilizer: Pansies will need less water in cooler weather, but check them during dry spells. Feed every other week with an all-purpose liquid fertilizer.

Pansies are a smart choice for containers and window boxes, too. When planting, use a good quality potting mix amended with peat moss, and add a slow-release fertilizerto keep plants at their peak. Containers dry out faster than flower beds, so check them frequently.

Pansies’ bright colors and easygoing personalities make them popular companions. In containers, they can surround small shrubs like blueberry or hydrangea. In the landscape, you see them edging flower beds with annuals like mums and perennials like heuchera and hostas. In both containers and the landscape, use pansies to soften the edges of ornamental grasses. A classic fall pairing is flowering kale or cabbage with pansies.

Pansies can bounce back from frozen events. Trim back the dead stems and water and feed the plants as usual. In some cases, you may want to refresh the mulch or top dress with compost. It’s no surprise that with a little warmth and nutrition, your plants will grow and bloom again.

Pansies’ predilection for cooler weather, unfortunately, means that they will eventually succumb to the heat of summer. That threshold is around 65 degrees Fahrenheit. When they start to fade, it’s time to pull them up and replace with heat-savvy annuals like impatiens, begonias and marigolds. Put spent plants in the compost pile.

For season-spanning color, consider growing Cool Wave pansies. In warm soil and moderate air temperatures, the plants will grow quickly and spread, producing abundant blooms.

And due to its overwintering hardiness, Cool Wave will be the earliest pansy to return in spring. Expect Cool Wave pansies to overwinter in the north through USDA hardiness zone 5.

Plant Cool Wave pansies for fall and spring color in these regions: Northeast, Midwest, Pacific Northwest and Mid-Atlantic.

Expect Cool Wave pansies to bloom through winter in these regions: Southwest, Coastal California, South Florida and Southeast.