Fall’s fresh faces
Pansies are useful cool-season annuals for the Houston garden
Pansies are eye candy in the garden. The most colorful of our coolseason annuals, they accommodate any palette from muted lavender to moody indigo, outrageous orange and mahogany or soft peach, snowy white or near black.
Halloween is pansy-planting time. They need consistently cooler temperatures or they’ll sulk and stretch. Nurseries are packed with flats in startling color combinations. Just pick those that suit your place. Purchase healthy, stocky plants with dark-green leaves. Resist those in full bloom and take home budded plants.
Pansies are cold-hardy in Texas, flowering late fall through spring in sun and organically enriched, welldraining soil.
Work blood meal into the soil before planting to encourage continual blooms. Apply a balanced, water-soluble fertilizer monthly. Pinch leggy plants for bushy growth.
Although prolific bloomers, pansies are short and compact — so plant masses of single or complementary colors for the greatest display. Space 4-inch potted transplants 6 to 8 inches apart.
Or use pansies to complement spring-flowering bulbs such as daffodils and tulips as well as containers of snapdragons and alyssum.
The blooms are edible if organically grown; they add a mild minty flavor to salads or candy.
Relatives of the old-fashioned Johnnyjump-up and sweet violet that grandmothers grew, pansies belong to the genus Viola, which contains about 500 species.
Fourth-century Greeks cultivated violas for herbal-medicinal use; the delicatelooking plants were an inspiration to Shakespeare. Victorians included the popular blooms in tussie-mussies to convey loving thoughts.
By the first half of the 1800s, breeders were crossing Viola species, and William Thompson, gardener for Lord Gambier of Iver, Buckinghamshire, England, is credited with developing Viola x Wittrockiana, the cheerful flower with a face we know today.
The modern-day pansy flower has five rounded petals and may be one clear color, a single color with black lines (penciling) radiating from the center or may have a dark center, the block of color on the lower petals we call the “face.”
Some pansy blooms wear two colors; some come with three.
Though the plant is generally 6 to 8 inches tall and wide, bloom size varies from large (3 to 4 inches) to medium (2 to 3 inches) to multiflora (1 to 2 inches).
The long-popular, award-winning Majestic Giant series features large-flowered pansies in six colors and a mix, all with faces.
Gaining ground among Texas gardeners is the stretch-resistant Colossus series with 3½- to 4-inch dark-blotched blooms in five colors, including ‘Neon Purple,’ and a mix.
Medium-size flowers in the Panola series come in a whopping 24 colors and 10mixes.
‘Panola Violet Pictotee’ is a stunner that shows up at a distance.
In the multiflora category, the heattolerant Crystal Bowl series features pansies in 11 single colors.
There are 14 Maxim colors, including ‘Maxim Marina,’ a light-blue pansy with a dark blue face outlined in white.
Heat-tolerant Universal pansies, clear or faced, are available in 13 colors as well as a mix.
Heat-tolerant Bingo cultivars produce 3½-inch blooms in 14 colors, including beautiful shades of blue and rose.
Baby Bingos are 8 inches in height and 6-8 inches in width but produce 2- to 2½-inch flowers available in six colors, including ‘Sky Blue’ and a mix.