Annual Vinca Bedding Plant Update - Five Weeks Later - July 2025

About five weeks (or so) ago - in Mid-June - I planted 64 plugs of annual Vinca.  Or, some call it Madigascar Periwinkle.   These were in the newly (as of last Fall) expanded front bed that I call our 'front porch bed'.  I've grown various flowering annuals up there.  To varying degrees of success.  Marigolds have worked.  Dusty Millers went nuts (and came back partially a second season).  One year, I did begonias and sedum.  The sedum looked great, but wasn't hardy.  Petunias failed.  Sun Patients didn't work, either.  

I'm NOT EXACTLY sure how I ended up with pink (light purple?) annual vinca, but in one of those garden-center-induced hazes, I found myself sitting in the driveway with a couple of flats of these annuals.  I planted them and hoped for the best.  At first, they were stinkers.  A number of them (maybe 10?) up-and-died.  The rest just sort of were blah.  

But then...time wore on.  And the heat arrived.  And I kept them watered.  Somewhat.  

Today, we have a carpet of blooms across the entire front border.  These turned out great:

A few notes (to myself):  This Fall, expand this bed out even further.  Especially around the far south edge.  And....bang-the-buck, these annual vinca are stars.  Fifty-cents-a-piece and they grow up-and-out and fill in the space.  They're flowering groundcover.  

Second, the 'deeper' portion of this planting looks better than the more-thin portion.  Plant the whole thing up 'deeper' like the part of the bed closest to us in the image above.  

Lastly...if we go this route again...think about a different color.  Or two bands of color.