Nancy loves impatiens as a beautiful, border flower. She has grown them from seeds and bought them in containers. She has dug and re-dug them as the squirrels chipped away, she has cast thousands of gallons of water on them to keep them alive. She has seen deer sneak in and eat them to the ground. She is through with them. We now, and will always in the future, a much more gardener-friendly bed of vinca.
Vinca is sometimes confused with periwinkles, but it is not. They are a non-stop flower show native to Madagascar. They are drought tolerant and require practically no maintenance.
Annal vinca grows 12 to 18 inches tall and comes in all sorts of colors – pink, purple, red, white, magenta, and bi-colors. The flowers are also attractive to butterflies and hummers.
Unlike many others, vinca doesn’t require deadheading, or the removal of faded flowers, to continue blooming, making it a wonderfully low-maintenance annual flower. Vinca is considered an annual, but some older types of vinca can self-seed in the garden. It can even be invasive in certain areas. Our friend Nancy McKay has vinca coming up wild in the cracks in her sidewalk.
Best of all, vinca appears to be rabbit and deer resistant. They grow in both full-sun and part-sun in well-drained soil. Plant any time after the ground has warmed in spring and they bloom and bloom and bloom.
Like a good martini, vinca likes the soil a bit on the dry side,
so they only require water when the top inch or so of the soil feels dry to the touch. A light top dressing of compost or a slow-release granular fertilizer at planting time carries them through the summer. Pruning is unnecessary.
Beautiful vinca is a flower almost too good to be true.