Today’s petunias offer enormous variety: single and double blooms, ruffled or smooth petals, striped, veined, or solid colors, mounding and cascading habits, and even some with old-fashioned fragrances. Most of the petunias sold today are hybrids, developed for specific design purposes, such as bed edging, cascading over hanging baskets, or covering the ground. It’s hard to go wrong choosing a petunia these days, but here’s some advice for pairing petunias with your particular design need. There are also hybrids of grandiflora and multiflora petunias, which share qualities of both types. A whole new category was created to describe them, known as the floribundas. The floribunda ‘Madness’ series that was introduced in the 1970s has grandiflora-sized flowers and multiflora weather tolerance. Today, you can find floribunda petunias with either small or large flowers.
