12 Powerful Flowers That Start with P for You to Grow This Year

Pretty as a picture and pleasingly precious. Picking the perfect plant each season is a profound pleasure of mine. Perhaps you’re looking to pull pollinators into your garden for their principal occupation, or possibly you prefer to preview a list of flowers starting with P.

I’m proceeding along through my favorite flowering plants to add to the garden this year, letter by letter. Predictably, I’ve stumbled along to the letter ‘p.’

1. Painted daisy (Tanacetum coccineum)

Also known as the pyrethrum daisy, painted daisies are one of the most useful sweeties to plant in your garden.

Painted daisies produce a natural insecticide in their tissue that dissuades pests, while their bright pink, white, or red flowers attract bees and other beneficial insects. It’s an all-around champion and a delight to behold, too.

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2. Pansy (Viola × wittrockiana)

Pansies evoke a classic cottage garden, with pert round blossoms in a variety of colors and patterns. They’re a hybrid first developed from Viola flowers at some point in the 18th century, and they’ve been a popular choice for short-season gardens and annual displays ever since.

3. Paraguay Nightshade (Lycianthes rantonnetii)

Paraguay nightshade is a sizable, easy-to-grow warm climate shrub. It can be trained into elegant hedges speckled with delicate purple flowers that mature into bright red berries. Be warned, however!

This plant is nightshade by name and nightshade by nature, and every part is poisonous to humans. Plant with care.

4. Pasque flower (Pulsatilla vulgaris)

This fuzzy alpine wildflower is a type of buttercup, though it’s hard to see the similarities. Pasque flowers are regal purple, star-shaped, and covered in a light layer of soft down. They grow naturally in dry mountain meadows throughout northern Europe, kept warm by their cover of fuzz.

5. Peony (Paeonia japonica)

Peonies are long-lived, compact shrub known for fast seasonal growth that dies back entirely each winter. They produce spectacular white flowers, strongly fragrant and blowsy. So powerfully and wonderfully perfumed are peony blossoms that it’s possible to perfume your whole garden with a single planting.

6. Petunia (Calibrachoa)

Sometimes called a Million Bells for their astonishing profusion of blooms, these dainty dwarf Petunias are best grown in hanging baskets and small containers.

They don’t ask for much, but keep them happy and they’ll deliver a dazzling abundance of flowers in a wide range of colors, including yellow, red, orange, and even purple, burgundy, and magenta.

7. Pincushion Flower (Scabiosa atropurpurea)

The pincushion flower lives up to its name, sporting sweet round flowers that resemble a small mauve cushion speckled with pins.

Blossoms are long-lasting, produce abundant nectar, and attract bees butterflies and hummingbirds. They also make excellent cut flowers, and many fans keep them in dried flower arrangements for a truly enduring display.

8. Prairie poppy mallow (Callirhoe alcaeoides)

Prairie poppy mallow is a ghostly flower, a single white bloom that rises from a low-growing sprawl of simple leaves. They’re an American native wildflower, common in the plains from Illinois to the Great Plains. It sneaks its way into barren grounds and the disturbed land at roadsides, a whisper of lost prairies long forgotten.

9. Poppy (Papaver alpinum)

A cold-weather flower, this form of poppy is also known as the alpine or dwarf poppy. They produce compact flowers no less lovely than their larger cousins, in similar shades of white, yellow, orange, or red. They’re an ideal choice for cottage gardens in cooler areas, or at elevation.

10. Polka Dot Plant (Hypoestes phyllostachya)

With splashy bright leaves and dainty purple blooms, the polka dot plant grows equally well as an indoor plant as it does out in the garden. While it’s mostly grown for its dark leaves dappled with pink, it produces elegant spears that hold tiny purple blooms. It’s a swan song, as the polka dot plant is short-lived and will die off once its flowering is complete.

11. Periwinkle (Catharanthus roseus)

For year-round flowers, it’s hard to go past the periwinkle. They’re a great choice for water saver gardens as they require very little irrigation. Even when dry they grow in profusion, producing as if by magic thick beds of glossy green leaves and pert, simple flowers in bright pink, purple, or white.

Periwinkle has a long history of use as a medicinal plant which continues to this day, forming a key part of modern cancer treatments.

12. Perennial Phlox (Phlox paniculata)

Hummingbirds and butterflies find the tall, swaying blooms of perennial phlox to be simply irresistible. In good conditions, it will reach four feet tall without breaking a sweat, with dense fragrant clusters of simple flowers in pink, lavender, or white.

It’s an excellent addition to any wildflower garden, where its long blooming period will ensure your local pollinators are fed well through the year.

Final thoughts

Proud and pleasing, placing pert and perky flowers promote peace and pleasure in any plot or patch. Protecting pollinators is a profound payoff, a prize for painstaking planting.  Perfect!