Canna

More Information About Canna

Plant Delights is pleased to offer some of the more unique and rare cannas for sale that provide beautiful flower color, dazzling foliage color, or both. Cannas are bold perennials that pair well with finer-textured plants such as amsonia, hemerocallis, iris, kniphofia and ornamental grasses.

There are many tall cultivars of canna lily that are perfect for the back of the border, as well as several dwarf cannas that can be used along the edge of a path. Canna lily flowers sometimes have an eye-popping saturated color and sometimes a demure pastel tone. Both types attract hummingbirds and butterflies to the garden. Canna leaves are usually green, but there are beautiful purple or variegated leaf forms on the market, such as our best selling canna lilies... Canna Phasion (aka Canna Tropicanna), Bengal Tiger Canna, and Canna Australia.

How to Grow Canna Lilies

Canna lilies are extremely heavy feeders that also like full sun, baking heat, and plenty of moisture during the growing season. They also tolerate coastal environments well. If your canna plants look ratty during in the summer, that's a sure sign an extra shovel of compost is required. You can cut a ragged canna plant to the ground even in midsummer, add fertilizer, water, and it will recover quickly. In areas with warm summers as well as winters above 0 degrees F, cannas can remain in the ground. North of USDA hardiness zone 8, gardeners should buy canna lilies and plant them before September in order to give them time to establish before winter arrives. In colder climates, lift the canna bulbs (actually they are rhizomes) and store them above freezing in dry peat moss for the winter. It is a tough, low maintenance plant which makes canna perfect for rain gardens.

Canna Bulbs (Rhizomes) or Canna Plants?

Cannas are geophytes; a plant that uses bulbs, corms, tubers, or rhizomes to store energy and water. While not strictly bulbs, cannas are considered rhizomatous perennials, many people often say canna bulbs when referring to the dormant rhizomes.

Our canna plants are grown in gallon pots and not shipped as dried canna bulbs as most other mail order nurseries do. We have an excellent selection of cannas for sale, so when you are ready to buy canna lilies, check out our well-rooted, healthy growing canna lilies for sale.

Additional Canna Lily Resources

Canna, Canna, Canna - Growing Canna Lilies in Your Garden - Tony gives his personal tips on growing and propagating canna as well as the fascinating history and taxonomy of this amazing genus of herbaceous perennials.

For more pictures of the canna we have growing in the nursery or at Juniper Level Botanic Garden, check out Tony's many blog posts featuring canna lilies at the JLBG.org blog.