If your pots are plastic and the moveable kind - you can have several and plant the annuals early in the season and keep them someplace else until they are ready to go out for display. I have a shade house and they stay in there - when the pansies go downhill - they get moved and the new pots come out - then I will clean out those pots and get some fall flowers started to trade out in the fall. DH calls it my revolving pots. He is going to build me permanent wooden planters and I can just trade the pots out when I want to. He is going to do the same thing with window boxes - wooden permanent window boxes and I will use plastic boxes to put in them....

Lynne

My cruel decision is to buy a variety of annuals and foliage plants in May and then rip out the still-gorgeous pansies on Memorial Day weekend and replace them. Sad to say, no one wants pansies after June 1 so I can't even give them away. But you're right, if you wait, there's not much great stuff left.

I replace my pots of pansies (and the driveway corner bed) with impatiens, which don't come into their own until things heat up a little. I buy a couple of flats cheap from Wallyworld just about now and keep them watered until the pansies peter out. The impatiens last until its cool when pansies go back in. With a mild winter like the one just past, my pansies winter over even in the pots.

I replace my pansies with marigolds - they seem to be heat tolerant and look good all summer long. What about begonias?

Madagascar periwinkle (annual phlox).