I bought a couple flats of these patented pansies last fall and put them into some very poor soil in semi-sun (4 hours a day) not expecting much.
Well, they bloomed and bloomed all fall into December until they were completely covered with snow. As soon as the snow melted in March, they started blooming again. And blooming, and blooming.
I planted my summer annuals around them and kept waiting for the ice pansies to quit so that I could pull them out and make room for the new stuff. It didn't happen. They kept growing and blooming the whole way through the first week of August.
We had a hot spell after that and they got a bit bedraggled looking, so I pulled them, but one plant which I threw on the compost heap rerooted itself and it is STILL blooming away, merrily, in the shade.
Oh, and did I mention that the blooms were very pretty (I planted, orange, white, and blue).
I am going to be haunting the garden center so I can snap up more of these as soon as they come in. Last year the pretty ones were gone within days--obviously to people who had planted them the previous year and knew what they were looking at.
BTW I'm in W Mass on a hillside that is in the colder part of Zone 5.
--Jenny