Michigan Petunias

The Petunia is the tireless color-maker of the Michigan summer: soft, trumpet-shaped blooms in lavender, deep purple, magenta, white, and endless bicolors, tumbling out of hanging baskets, window boxes, and garden beds from June until frost. Where many flowers have a moment, petunias simply keep going, mounding and trailing and reblooming through heat and rain alike. They are the plant that makes a front porch or a market stand feel like high summer.

Garden petunias are hybrids in the genus Petunia, tender relatives of the tomato from South America, so in Michigan they are grown as warm-season annuals started fresh each spring. Our growers raise them as vigorous, well-branched plants ready to pour color into containers and beds, and they truly hit their stride in the long, warm days of a Michigan summer.

Petunias are prized above all as a garden and container flower rather than a long-stemmed cut, though their bright, fragrant blooms are lovely tucked into a short posy or a table arrangement. Whether you are filling a porch pot, a wedding-venue container, or a sunny bed, they deliver more color for the effort than almost anything else we grow.