Window boxes add a boost of color and charm to the home, and give apartment dwellers a chance to experience the pleasure of gardening. Enjoy a succession of blooms by planting flowers in their season. Begin with fresh spring flowers followed by summer mainstays, and finish the season with fall flowers that bloom until frost. Annual flowers are ideal because of their long bloom seasons, and low maintenance requirements.
Spring Flowers - Sweet peas come in both trailing types with vines up to 6 feet long and bush types that grow as much as 2 feet tall. Geraniums are classic window box flowers that grow 1 to 3 feet tall with red, pink or salmon-colored blossoms. Purple shamrocks are grown more for their foliage than their pink or white flowers. Fuchsias produce 2- to 3-foot trailing stems loaded with complicated flowers in combinations of white, pink, purple and coral.
Long-Season Flowers - While many gardeners enjoy a constantly changing window box garden, others want to plant once and enjoy it throughout the seasons. Several flowers offer blooms from spring until frost. Impatiens are window box mainstays with nonstop flowers in a wide range of colors. Annual vincas bloom in white and shades of pink and purple. They tolerate heat and dry soil, which is an advantage if your window box sits where it will absorb heat reflected from the glass. Fan flowers produce white or blue blossoms on long, trailing stems. Pansies and violas like cool weather. In mild climates they bloom from fall until they are killed back by spring and summer heat.