The Best Outdoor Flowers for Front Yards

Annuals

• There's no doubt about it: Annual flowers are the show-stoppers of the garden. They bloom prolifically from spring until frost kills them in autumn. This makes them ideal for the front yard, where appearance means everything. Although they come in a myriad of colors and flower types, for the biggest impact in the front yard, plant a single variety of annual flowers en masse in beds and borders. The large mass of a single color is much more apparent from the street than a bed filled with a lot of colors, shapes and sizes.

General Purpose

• For a front yard that gets a respectable amount of direct sun per day -- from six to eight hours -- plant general purpose annuals. These are flowers that thrive in full sun to partial shade, require moderate amounts of moisture, good drainage and adequate amounts of fertilizer. Annuals best for these types of sites include marigolds, cosmos, bachelor buttons and larkspur.

Shade-Tolerant

• Although all annual flowers require some direct sun in order to bloom, a few produce a respectable number of blossoms in partial to mostly shade. Impatiens tolerate the most shade of any annual flower, producing copious amounts of blossoms until the frost kills them. Snapdragon, lupine, pansy and sweet alyssum prefer cooler weather and bloom longer if grown in partial shade during hot summer weather.

Sun Lovers

• If your front yard bakes in the sun all day, plant annuals that thrive in hot, sunny sites. New hybrid sunflowers grow shorter than species varieties, some as short as 12 inches, which is an ideal height for the front yard. Other sun-loving annuals include zinnias, moss roses, salvia and 4 o'clocks. Mulch the soil in the flower beds with a decorative mulch such as buckwheat hulls, cocoa hulls, shredded bark or colored gravel. The mulch also conserves water, reducing the need for artificial irrigation.