These color-drenched blooms measure about 2½ to 3 inches across, and begin appearing just 9 to 10 weeks from sowing. Expect all shades from ivory-cream to deepest red, with numerous bi- and even tri-colors! It's as if a talented artist -- not realizing how uniform (and boring!) most plants are about their bloom colors -- had painted each flower to his particular whimsy!

These plants reach just 8 to 10 inches high and 6 to 8 inches wide, so you're going to want to fill your planters and windowboxes with them, but consider a large planting around the mailbox, along a pathway, or at the front of the annual bed, too. The blooms are quite long-lasting on super-tough, vigorous little plants, and you can get a long season of bloom, beginning in late summer and lasting until frost cuts the flowers back.

If you like the look of Flambe Terracotta Shades, welcome to the painterly world of new Italian Pansies! Take a look at the other Flambe Terracotta color, extraordinary striped Chianti, and feast your eyes on double-flowered Flamenco Mix and sunset-hued Pandora's Box. (Or get one packet of each of these exciting varieties in our popular Italian Pansy Mix!) It's a whole new world out there beyond the familiar "faces" of classic Majestic Giants!

To start your Pansies, cover the seeds well, as darkness is needed for germination. (Dropping them into the holes of the Bio Dome is fine.) Keep the temperature at 65 to 75 degrees F for about 2 weeks, until the sprouts appear. Then grow them cool -- 50 degrees F or below. The Flambe Terracotta series was specially bred for fall crops, but you can also grow them for spring in mild and warm climates. Pkt is 25 seeds.