How To Plant, Grow, And Care For Morning Glory Flowers

Want to grow morning glories? This plant, with its romantic tendrils and trumpet-shaped flowers, is beloved by butterflies and hummingbirds. It’s often mistaken for a perennial weed with the same name. Learn how to plant and grow morning glory flowers!

About Morning Glories

NOTE: This guide is NOT about the perennial weed that shares the common name of “morning glory.” That plant is classified as a noxious weed in many states. Read more below.

Morning glories are tender annuals, so they are sensitive to cool temperatures and late frosts. They bloom from early summer to the first frost of fall.

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Their fragrant, colorful flowers come in pink, purple-blue, magenta, or white. Pollinators love morning glories’ trumpet-shaped blooms.

Train twining morning glory vines over a pergola or arch, or use them as a dense groundcover. This drought-tolerant plant grows quickly—up to 10 feet in one season—and can self-seed fairly easily. Because of this, you’ll want to choose where you put this plant wisely! Otherwise, you may have more morning glories than you bargained for.

Warning: All morning glory seeds are poisonous, especially in large quantities. Keep them out of reach of children and pets.

Annual Versus Perennial Morning Glories

The attractive annual morning glory (Ipomoea spp.) is often mistaken for its perennial cousin, field bindweed (Convolvulus arvensis), a very troublesome, invasive weed native to Europe and Asia.

Field bindweed—also called “perennial morning glory” or “creeping jenny”—grows similarly to our annual morning glory but sends out deep, deep roots (up to 9 feet deep!), which are very difficult to get rid of and allow the plant to overwinter in areas where cultivated morning glories could not.

To tell the difference between the plants, look closely at the leaves, flowers, and vines:

• The leaves of the annual morning glory are heart-shaped and large (2 or more inches across). Field bindweed leaves are shaped more like an arrowhead and are smaller.
• Annual morning glory flowers may be pink, white, magenta, blue, purple, or red. Field bindweed flowers only occur in either pink or white, and blooms are much smaller than annual morning glory.
• Morning glory vines are usually thicker than bindweed vines and typically have small hairs.

In any case, if you come across a plant in your garden that resembles morning glory and you know you didn’t plant it, it’s best to err on the side of caution and treat it as a weed.