looking into Blue Scentsation (new to me), I love Tidal Wave also but bubble shows better in pictures.... thought maybe Alameda could use it to hide some of the weeds she complained about... they do take a good bit of water for those that watch that/ assuming she is on water well

your pics sure show bubble in its best form

The big pink in my pic is Tidal Wave Hot Pink...it’s a bit bigger and deeper in color than Supertunia Vista Bubblegum. In my 1st pic , you will see a smaller, lighter pink petunia just in front of my front door... that’s Vista Bubblegum.

I really loved the Blue Scentsation. I usually bypass that color in stores thinking it would only be for spring. You are doing plants not seeds right??

yes the lighter pink is my choice for my garden but do use Tidal Silver/ have not tried the other Tidal colors/love anything in lav or blue so that Blue Sen you mentioned is on my list.

wow =) these are just amazing. I had my first petunias this year (can't remember the name ). They were on pretty baskets and I killed them =(. I will have to try again after seeing these pictures again BenT. I would love to have beautiful plants like these with my roses. I just went to my local Lowes and they just got some tulips, these most come in later in the season.

Austinkisses I am glad you mentioned they can cover up the weeds, I have been planting several ground covers hoping they compete for the space with the weeds. I am going to add Petunias to my garden

Dianela,

Be sure to shop for the Tidal Wave or Supertunia Vista types. Those are much stronger growing and better suited to our long, hot , humid summers. They were hybridized with some much tougher South American petunia relative, and are wildly more vigorous.

Great info on hybrid petunias. I’ve seen these in the seed catalogues; have any of you started them from seed, or do you just buy the starts? :-)

I do both. Petunia seeds are very tiny, so for me the cuttings are easier. I’ll usually save off a mother plant of a variety I like and root cuttings for the next year. Here’s my Petunia Army set to go out in another few weeks, I used seeds for a new variety I wanted to try, the rest are cuttings.

I get volunteer petunias in my pots all the time and they look really pretty when the roses aren't in bloom.

Thanks for the recommendation! I have a lot of space to fill in my young garden, so I will look for these in the spring.

I love Supertunias. I planted STVB last year and had so many compliments on it, I even had a guy wanting to know what I did with it when I changed out the planter for autumn. This year I'm trying STVB and Limoncello together in the same pot, fingers crossed I don't hate the combo. I plan to track down Bordeaux to fill a hole near DA The Poet's Wife. Hopefully, it doesn’t become an Audrey II when planted in the ground, I’ve only ever had them in pots before.

Seil, volunteer seedlings are the best, yay to "free" plants!

I can’t wait to try some in my front yard this year ! I hope I can find them at Walmart. My fav and only nursery in town is Monrovia only so no proven winners . These petunias are fantastic!! I used the bubble gum in my urns in Tennessee.

be warned again everyone that not all of the supertunias perform the same, in Texas anyway... that is the reason Ben pointed to the Viva and the Tital Wave line.

Wow, those petunias look wonderful! I do see those varieties for sale around here. I’m curious as to if anyone else has trouble with little green caterpillars eating their petunias. I have an invasion of them every year, and they totally ruin my petunias. I do use BT when things get really bad, but I’m not looking for the extra work of applying BT regularly. It’s the only thing that doesn’t harm anything else, and it IS effective. I just need to apply it more often, and I get behind.

I'm saving this post to make sure I plant the correct ones. I think I had them before in my urns, but will put some with the roses this year. Gorgeous pictures, everyone. Nick, your combo with the blue floor is stunning! High Country roses carries Bordeaux and they have a coupon at the moment.

We have insecticide resistant tobacco budworm here, so petunias are only good if you like petunias for their leaves ( which would be covered with worm droppings) :-(.

I like petunias for their evening fragrance, but a lot of them are not. Year before last I had Priscilla, a lavender double that looked good with everything. But last summer I couldn't find any in the Green Market. Now that I know you can take cuttings I'll try that, if I stumble upon a plant.. I have blue lobelia in my windowsill wintering over. I hope it will last till spring. It shares a pot with Oxypetalum, a blue milkweed that I am struggling to keep clean of aphids. I also am keeping some so-called chocolate cosmos in a container under the stoop in the basement & also some yellow canna roots. The dark red cosmos looks very nice with pink roses, I think. (Below: Not my photo.)

Try the Laura Bush petunias. I buy seed and start indoors here, but they will re seed and come back even here in the cold. Good bloomers and they are fragrant too.

BenT, how do you get the cuttings to take? I've often wanted to keep starts over the winter from a particularly nice basket I find, but I have no idea how to do that with petunias/calibroacha.

When I lived in the Gulf Coast, I always thought of Petunias as slug fodder. I don't like using chemicals, so they were a no-go there. Here in Central Texas, I find they just want way too much water, and I try to conserve. You might look into native annuals. There are some wonderful selections of Drummond's phlox, or even just the field grown seeds. If you want something with yellow, I've become a huge fan of Dakota Gold selection of bitterweed. If you want perennials, look into any of the scutellaria (Skullcap) that are native here.

@Philip F I like salvia farinaca as well as Gaura. Also I like salvia coccinea. You can buy the seeds for these at swallowtail garden seeds. Here is a photo from several years ago with gaura Sparkle white.

Pink and white always look so great! And it's such a simple thing.

I just ordered some pink muhly grass for filler.

What I imagine in my head almost never matches reality so we'll see how this goes.