Reliable Hardy Fuchsia For Your Garden

Among the most spectacular summer flowers, Fuchsia are outstanding garden plants with their continuous display of ravishing, dancing blossoms dangling in clusters like prize jewels. Often blooming from late spring until the first frost, they are available in various colors, from luscious pinks and purples to whites and even peach. Attractive to butterflies and hummingbirds, Fuchsia plants require little care, and their various growing habits, from trailing and cascading to upright and bushy, making them the champions of hanging baskets, window boxes, and containers. They are also wonderful in summer-bedding schemes, as flowering hedges, or in permanent plantings.

There are thousands of cultivars and about 110 species found in the wild in Central and South America. Some Fuchsia are tender and tolerate USDA Hardiness Zone 10-11. Others are half-hardy Fuchsia and survive winters in USDA Hardiness Zones 9-10. They are generally used as an annual in hanging baskets, containers, or in summer bedding.

But Fuchsia flowers are not so fragile beauties. Some are quite hardy and can withstand temperatures down to -10ºF (-23ºC) and grow in USDA Hardiness Zones 6. They are useful in permanent plantings, adding vibrant pockets of summer color and showing up particularly well against dark evergreen shrubs. They are perfect to light up a dull, shady border. Harsh winters will remove their leaves and kill the growth down to the ground but will unlikely kill the plant completely. Fuchsias will readily shoot from roots below ground. Since Fuchsias bloom on their new wood, this means that if they are growing, they are flowering. If you expect generally cold winters, protect the crown of your Fuchsia in fall with a mulch of compost, bark or straw.

Here is a list of high-quality Fuchsia recommended for permanent plantings.