Looking for something new or different to color your summer flower pots and house-front beds?

As the threat of frost ends, garden centers will roll out their new-for-2024 lineup of tender annual flowers – the ones that bloom non-stop until fall frost.

Here’s a look at seven interesting annual-flower newcomers:

Surreal xSemponiums

What do you get when you cross a cold-hardy hens-and-chicks plant (Sempervivum) with a tender, tropical Aeonium?

British breeder Daniel Michael managed to do just that and came up with a new cross called “semponium” that offers a range of interesting leaf colors and forms.

Succulent fans will love this new five-variety series named Surreal, which Monrovia growers are debuting in the U.S. this spring.

The varieties include ‘Sienna’ (14 to 16 inches tall with red leaves), ‘Vortex’ (10 to 12 inches tall with a spiraled rosette of dark outer leaves and neon-green centers), ‘Destiny’ (16 to 18 inches tall with reddish-black leaves), ‘Diamond’ (10 to 12 inches tall with bright green leaves that have red edges), and ‘Mrs. Frosty’ (10 to 12 inches tall with narrower brownish-pink leaves).

Although semponiums are cold-hardier than Aeonium, they’re not as cold-tough as hens-and-chicks. They’ll be sold as USDA Zone 8 annuals.

Plants are deer resistant, grow in full sun to part shade, and like most succulents, don’t need much water.

Surreal Semponium® Destiny. Courtesy Concept Plants BV®

Blackjack™ Agapanthus. Photo courtesy Concept Plants

Centaurea ragusina Silver Swirl. Photo courtesy Darwin Perennials

Blackjack™ Agapanthus

Another British import coming to U.S. gardens this spring is this strappy-leafed plant with striking lily-like dark purple flowers.

Agapanthus Blackjack earned 2023 Plant of the Year honors at last year’s Chelsea Flower Show in London and a People’s Choice award in 2024 National Garden Bureau Green Thumb voting.

What’s unusual is that the flowers are so dark purple that they open from black buds and then border on black at first – different from the more common blue or white shades of agapanthus (a plant sometimes known as lily-of-the-Nile).

In the South, agapanthus is a durable, evergreen, drought-tough plant that comes back year after year. It’ll be sold as a perennial as part of the Southern Living Plant Collection in Zones 8 and up.

In colder regions, Black Jack is better suited as a summer-flowering pot centerpiece that grows about 20 inches tall, ideally in part sun.

Centaurea ragusina Silver Swirl

Dusty millers – long grown for their silvery foliage – are sold as frost-hardy annuals in most of the U.S. But this new cousin from Darwin Perennials is supposedly tough enough to survive all winter at least down into USDA Zone 7.

That attribute was enough to earn it a 2023 Retailer’s Choice award at last summer’s AmericanHort Cultivate industry show as a plant with the potential to become a garden-center best-seller.

Technically a species known as Centaurea ragusina, Silver Swirl looks almost identical to classic dusty millers, except with thicker and wavier leaf edges. The silvery leaf color is the main attraction.

Plants grow 10 inches tall, ideally in full sun, and are drought-tough and rabbit-resistant.

Petchoa Caliburst™ Yellow. Photo courtesy PanAmerican Seed

EnViva™ Pink Petchoa. Photo courtesy All American Selections

Petchoa Caliburst™ Yellow

Petchoas are a cross of petunias and calibrachoa. The break-through with PanAmerican Seed’s ‘Caliburst Yellow’ is that it’s the first petchoa to be grown from seed as opposed to cuttings from a parent plant.

That trait earned the variety the 2023 Industry’s Choice Medal of Excellence from the Greenhouse Grower trade magazine. But the magazine also was impressed with ‘Caliburst Yellow’s’ vibrant two-tone yellow flowers and its cold tolerance.

As with most petchoas, ‘Caliburst Yellow’ has a trailing but compact habit and a height of six to 10 inches, making it an ideal choice for hanging baskets and large pots.

It’ll do best in full sun to light shade.

EnViva™ Pink Petchoa

EnViva Pink is another new petchoa that performed well enough in national trials last year to earn one of the five 2024 All-America Selections national awards for new annuals.

AAS judges especially liked the variety’s heavy bloom of large, bright-pink flowers with yellow throats.

“The awesome bright hot-pink color contrasts really well with the yellow throat... absolutely stunning,” the judges wrote.

Introduced by Selecta One North America, EnViva Pink grows 12 to 14 inches tall, has good heat tolerance, bounces back well after a rain, and is ideal in sunny containers or hanging baskets.

Geranium Big EEZE Pink Batik. Photo courtesy All American Selections

Cuphea Sweet Talk™ Deep Pink. Photo courtesy George Weigel

Geranium Big EEZE Pink Batik

One of the other 2024 All-America Selections award-winners is this geranium with the unusual mosaic flower color.

Dummen Orange’s Big EEZE Pink Batik is a hybrid with two-tone pink flowers that AAS judges called “absolutely beautiful and plentiful.”

Plants grow about 18 inches tall and produce up to 100 blooms per season, especially when the spent clusters are dead-headed after they brown.

Pink Batik is heat-tough, has dark green leaves, and is best geared to growing in pots in either full sun or part shade.

Cuphea Sweet Talk™

Pollinator-attracting plants are the rage lately, and this new three-color series of cuphea offers that trait in an annual that few people know or grow.

Introduced by PanAmerican Seed, the Sweet Talk series includes a pink bloomer (Sweet Talk Deep Pink), a lavender bloomer (Sweet Talk Lavender Splash), and the market’s only red cuphea (Sweet Talk Red).

The flowers might look delicate, but they take heat well and bloom even into early fall after a light frost or two.

Plants grow a bushy 14 inches tall, ideally in full sun.