Annuals are an easy way to fill-in a garden while the slower growing shrubs and trees work their way slowly out of the ground. The latter plants put down tap roots during the first two years and often don't grow nearly as fast as some hybrids during that time. They will payoff later in their extreme drought tolerance (assuming you have picked the drought tolerant kind of natives).
Sowing seeds in the fall, or winter will repay you year after year. Lupines, in particular, will require some preparation scarifying or something. They are harder to get established. The photo is Lupinus succuluntus which is a huge lupine, two to three feet high when in bloom. The first year only about one plant survived to bloom, now in the third year seventeen plants were weeded down by (slugs?) to leave eleven plants beginning to bloom.
Annuals in my garden tend to be much more giant than I see out in the wild. I have no explanation for this unless I have more clay than is available on Cerro San Luis, Irish Hills, or the residential area closer to where SLO Weather is located. This year with it's above average rainfall has had an impact but previous years the California poppies and miner's lettace have also been very large.
One warning: the weeds love to hide in annuals. It almost seems to me that the weeds figure out how high to grow so they are not discovered too soon. Some might say it's just the amount of water every plant in the same area, but maybe it's more like growing up to find the sun since some grow higher around manzanitas.
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