I’ll be honest, the main reason I wanted to write this post is to share the photos of my beautiful morning glory blooms from a couple of summers back. I usually don’t grow morning glories, but I spotted a seed packet of blue and white ones at a local hardware store which attracted me so I grabbed one packet for the heck of it.

Easy to Sow

Morning Glory seeds are easy to sow and seeds are not super small, so the seeds are easy to handle as well (tip for gardening children sowing), but it is recommended, for better results, to soak the seeds in lukewarm water for 24 to 48 hours before planting the seeds. I can’t recall if I did that, but I remember I started them indoors and planted them in a couple planters by my garage and under some of my birdhouses situated on tall poles.

Morning Glory Flying Saucers

Don’t you agree? These blue and white morning glory blooms are fantastic. Here’s one of the photos I snapped as they started opening up. Blue colors are sometimes hard to find in blooms, thus this one really showed off a gorgeous deep blue – almost like a Caribbean ocean blue, against the pure white. And they were fairly large blooms, about 3-4″ across.

Look – at – that – blue!

It is ironic that I accidentally captured a photo with my iPhone where the flower looks like it is flying on it’s own and hovering in space. Notice the stem became unfocused in this shot. Ironic because they are called ‘Flying Saucers’ on the seed packet.

It is a good idea to take a photo with the seed packet so you remember the name of it! These photos are from 2018. I grew these Crimson Rambler Morning Glories as well the same year. The foliage is heart shaped and the blooms are smaller than the Flying Saucers’ blooms.

My idea was they would climb up to the gutters of my garage and I would arch them over the doors using twine to guide them along. They were getting there but I found morning glories to be a bit messy. I didn’t like how they twined around other plants in my container gardens, but I did like how they twined up poles to my birdhouses in my yard.

The Crimson Ramble Morning Glories really looked lovely against this old white birdhouse. This birdhouse is in a planter. I wished a bird would have moved in, but none did – probably because this birdhouse is more a decorative type. But I have other birdhouses in my landscape on tall poles, which my husband setup for us here and there, that the birds love. I wrote about our process to setup the birdhouses on tall poles on a prior blog post called, “A Unique Way to Install a Birdhouse,” which is rather popular post based on views.

The morning glory plants grew all the way to the top of a pole for this birdhouse (photo above) and I just loved the look. Birds move into this birdhouse every year. They seem to like it’s location (faces southeast). It is fun to watch them peek out especially with the beautiful rosy flowers all around. To the right of the birdhouse you may notice I have a Hydrangea called ‘Quick Fire’ and the blooms start off white and turn pink and get a darker pink over the course of its bloom cycle. They made a nice combo in this little bed by my driveway.

It is always fun to take photos of blooms like these with the white centers and deep colors as the center feels like it is glowing sometimes at the right time of day. Sometimes I check to see if any insects are resting inside the funnel of the blooms.

Climbs and Grows up Tall

Morning Glories may reach 10 to 15 feet in height and the Flying Saucers did. If you want a climber, these are quick to climb and will bloom in late summer to fall. They should be planted outdoors after all dangers of our last spring frost date here in Connecticut.

Southern Exposure and Full Sun

I would check them out in the mornings to see if any insects were perched inside the fluted throats of these blooms. Both situations where I grew them faced east on the south side of my yard, so they received the morning sun and sun continued up until mid day. It is recommended for best continuous blooming to provide a southern exposure per the seed packets. I don’t think it much matters with morning glories because they almost grow like a weed, and they are easy to grow in dry sandy soils.

They are also very pretty in form when they are just about to open in the mornings, or maybe this photo was taken when they were closing up for the evenings. Morning glories, as you probably already know, open in the mornings to face the sun.

For the most part, the Flying Saucers were a true blue and vivid white, almost reminded me of a pinwheel, but there were a few blooms with a more faded blue color.

A Bit Messy

And even though I did like the morning glories, they were a bit messy. You can even see in this photo, some of the leaves were yellowing. They started to choke some of the stems of my other plants in the same container and I wasn’t too thrilled about how mangled or unruly they grew over time. I thought, I don’t think I’ll use them in planter combinations again, but I would use them on the birdhouse poles.

May Self-Sow Following Year

Morning glories may self-sow in planters and areas where they were planted the following year, I’ve seen this happen before, as I noted above, they are almost like weeds, but in my case, not a weed – because a weed is a plant out of place. I guess it was out of place in-front of my garage for the reasons noted above, but not out of place on the birdhouse poles.

Thanks for visiting, and please if you have any questions or comments, scroll to the top of this post, look for the red comment box on the top right to leave your thoughts (or on iPhones, look for the “Leave a Reply” link.) I appreciate hearing from other gardening enthusiasts and plant lovers.

Cathy Testa of Container Crazy CT
Container Gardener
Zone 6B
Broad Brook, CT
Please see also:

www.WorkshopsCT.com
www.ContainerGardensCT.com