New and Better Plants in the Garden Center

It's mid-February, and the magnolias are starting to bloom in Alabama. It's hard to believe but spring is coming soon. The days are getting longer and the nursery catalogs are arriving so now is when people start thinking about what to add to their garden. 

If you are a professional landscape designer, you should be thinking about adding at least one new plant to your pallet. If you are a nurseryman, you should be thinking of even more. Just like iPhones and software, plants are always improving. 

On average, we introduce about 30 new woody plants a year. This is not set in stone; it just happens that we either found or developed that many when looking at thousands of trial plants. Today I'm going to introduce you to four excellent landscape plants. Let's get to it. 

GLOW STICK™ and GLOW BALL™ Ilex crenata

Glow Stick™ holly is a plant that adds both color and architecture to the garden. Like all Japanese holly, it does best in well-drained and slightly acidic soil. It can take full sun or partial shade, but you get the brightest color in full sun and it does not burn or scorch. What I love about his plant is that you never have to prune it. Growers do not need to space it. It adds season-long interest to the garden and contrasts nicely with mounded and horizontal plants. Hardy to zone 5b, it is perfect for small gardens, narrow beds, and in decorative containers. 

Glow Ball™ holly will also brighten up your landscape. It has the same cultural requirements but has a rounded habit. Shear it as you want it, into a ball or a low hedge. Again, the more sun you give it, the brighter it gets and there are no worries about scorching.

FIRE BALL SEEDLESS™ Euonymus alatus

This shrub is truly a game changer. Burningbush is one of the toughest and most useful landscape plants, but the species can be invasive. This seedless selection has solved this issue so we can now use it without worry. 

It has the fire engine red fall color people love and expect. It gets its best fall color in full sun and is adaptable to most any soil so long as it is not in standing water. It is a workhorse. 

KINTZLEY'S GHOST® Lonicera reticulata

The last plant I want to showcase today is Kintzley's Ghost Honeysuckle vine. While this plant is not new, it has been rediscovered and reintroduced to give it the spotlight it deserves.

This wild-looking plant is actually native to North America. Each season, it begins like any other honeysuckle, with typical dusty green leaves. As the season progresses, flower buds pop out like saucers. These rounded bracts look a lot like eucalyptus, but the flowers at the center feed native pollinators like hummingbirds! They turn into red berries in the fall, but won’t become a nuisance like other honeysuckles. Due to its size and interesting seasonal changes, it makes an incredible specimen.

Hardy from zone 4a to 8b, This easy-to-grow vine is adaptable and carefree. It is deer-resistant and attracts bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds. 

Come back soon. I will be featuring more new plants to make your landscapes the best they can be. 

When Trialing Roses You Have To Be Ruthless

I have managed large public rose gardens. I worked for a nursery that grew over  a million and a half bud and bloom, container roses per year. I have been an (AARS) All American Rose Selection judge. I specified roses as a landscape designer. So when it came time to develop a new line of roses, I knew that I had to be ruthless. I needed to create a testing system that separated the wheat from the chaff.

Fellows Riverside Gardens, Rose Garden in Youngstown, Ohio

When growing finished roses for a nursery, it became quite clear that the roses in two- and three-gallon pots had a limited shelf life. With each passing week, foliar diseases became a greater problem, even though we sprayed them with fungicides once a week. The daily overhead watering and the tight spacing were ideal conditions for black spot and mildew. So when developing our new trialing program, container trials with overhead watering were the first step, except we would not use any fungicides.

Greenhouse container trials with overhead watering and no fungicides

Ringo® Double Pink was a standout in our container trials.

As a rose garden manager, it was clear that over time a rose garden that is not rotated accumulates a bank of fungal spores that would infect our clean, newly planted bushes. The first year the roses looked fine, but in year two the disease took hold. That is why I do not rotate our rose trial beds. That is why we look at them for three years in the garden before we make any decisions about which plants to introduce. And of course we never use fungicides. 

Drone view of our trial garden 

Oso Easy® Double Pink was a clear winner in our garden trials.

We get trial roses from about five different breeders, and every one goes through this process. The odds are most selections will be trashed after two years. Any plant that shows disease is removed from the trail. Our goal is to throw them away as quickly as possible to make room for new selections. If I can find one rose variety out of a hundred that remains clean, looks good in the container and in the garden, flowers repeatedly, and is better than what's on the market, I am happy. Here are a few of my favorites that have passed the test and made our catalog.

At Last®—The fragrant blooms just keep on coming. 

At Last® rose combines all the romance of a fragrant, fully petaled tea rose with the no-nonsense practicality and vigor of a landscape rose. Enjoy a non-stop display of large, sweetly perfumed orange blossoms from late spring through frost. Handsome, glossy foliage and a vigorous, rounded habit make it ideal for use in the landscape or flower garden. Developed by Colin Horner of England.

Oso Easy® Double Pink creates a blanket of rich pink blooms.

Oso Easy® Double Pink - Excellent disease resistance and abundant, continuous blooms set this low-mounded, ground-covering rose apart from the crowd. Ten or more double flowers are produced per stem, creating a cheerful mass of rich pink all summer. Glossy, dark green leaves add to its appeal. Developed by Meilland International of France. It has gone on to win a Gold Medal in the Baden-Baden Rose trials, the ARS Best Shrub Rose in Ground Cover Form, and the Medaille d'Or in the Concours International trials in Nyon, France. 

Oso Easy Double Red has gone on to win over 10 trialing awards.

Oso Easy® Double Red - A floriferous rose with tulip-like double blooms. Dark, disease-resistant foliage and a sturdy, rounded habit. Flowers are held well above the foliage, providing a distinctive, showy look. Developed by Meilland International of France, this rose has already won ten awards, including the 2020 Rose of the Year, the Bagatelle Rose Trials 1st Prix, Prize of the Public and Certificat de Mérite; Le Roeulx Rose Trials Gold Medal; Lyon Rose Trials 1st Prize and Prize for Rebloom and Disease Resistance; Monza Rose Trials City of Monza Prize and Gold Medal, plus four others. This is a must-grow landscape rose. 

Oso Easy Enfuego™ is a warm rose that changes colors.

Oso Easy En Fuego® - A show-stopping new rose with all the bright colors and fun of a Mexican fiesta. Super clean, glossy, dark green leaves are the backdrop for nonstop blooms and fiery hues of yellow, orange, and red. If ever there was an impulse plant, this is it! Hardy and heat tolerant, it has been a standout performer in both Michigan and Florida trials. Another great plant hybridized by Chris Warner of the UK. 

Oso Easy Ice Bay® has super dark green and pure white flowers. 

Oso Easy Ice Bay® - “Simply beautiful” are the first words that will come to your mind when looking at this pure white rose. Incredibly effective in the landscape, its beauty lies in the simplicity of its flowers and their large, silky petals. Hardy and heat tolerant, this rose keeps its beautiful dark leaves and bright flowers until late autumn. While a single specimen of this special rose is enough to draw attention, it’s especially unforgettable as a mass planting. 

Oso Easy Peasy® is one of the very best, ground-covering landscape roses.

The 2024 Rose of the Year and the winner of the 2017 American Rose Society Award of Excellence in the No Spray division, this rugged beauty sends continuous sprays of vivid pink flowers from early summer through frost. Developed by the award-winning rose breeder, David Charles Zlesak. It is Easy Peasy!

Ringo® Double Pink is perhaps the best Persica hybrid to date

Ringo® Double Pink - Ringo roses glam up the garden! Developed with the extraordinary talent of the UK’s Chris Warner, this series provides disease resistance, durability, long bloom times, and the novelty of colorful flowers that not only sport a bright ring in their center but transform in tone as they age. Ringo Double Pink is a cheerful, pure pink rose with loads of semi-double flowers accented with bright yellow stamen surrounded by a distinctive wine-stained eye. More than just a pretty face, it is also very hardy, with glossy foliage that exhibits excellent black spot resistance. Winner of the First Class Certificate at the Hague Rose Trials. 

Rise Up Lilac Days® has a wonderful, intense fragrance.

Rise Up Lilac Days® - Breathe deep: the fragrance of this nearly thornless rambling climber is both alluring and enchanting. Waves of lovely lilac flowers arrive through the season in bouquet-like clusters. Perfect for scrambling up arches and fences. The romantic, semi-doubled flowers continue right up to frost, and its glossy, dark green foliage has shown superb black spot resistance. Great as a cut flower, as you can see below. Developed by the extraordinary talent Chris Warner of England. 

The End—thank you for visiting, and tell a friend.

PUFFER FISH® Hydrangea is a Winner

Make your landscape designs fun. PUFFER FISH® Hydrangea paniculata is like a BOBO® Hydrangea, but on steroids. Like Bobo, every inch of the plant is covered in billowy white blooms, but the plant is larger and the flower heads are much larger. It's so lovable, you will be compelled to hug it. Even as the white flowers age to green, new flowers continue to emerge at the tip. A bit like a fish statue spitting water into a fountain. Never floppy, the strong stems hold up the big blooms in the container and in the garden.

The output is:Three-gallon container of Puffer Fish hydrangea

In our Trial Garden

Note the size of the blooms.

This is the Hydrangea paniculata you want if you're looking for white. 

Note how the flowers keep emerging at the apex of the panicle.

The flowers age green without any pink.

Six Shrubs With Fantastic Fall Foliage

I would have thought, off the top of my head, that there were a lot of shrub species that had fantastic fall color, but when I drove our trial fields searching, I was dismayed that only a limited number of species really stood out with bright autumn hues. Of course everyone thinks of burning bush as the quintessential fall color shrub, but there has to be more. What else is there to use? 

With a bit of thought, I came up with a list of six outstanding shrubs that can add fantastic fall color to your landscape. They're in no particular order, but they're all excellent plants that are worthy of a place in your yard, nursery, or landscape design. Each has its own unique hue of fall foliage color, from blends of bright orange to bold purplish reds. And unlike Euonymus alatus, they're all North American natives. 

   

1. LEGEND OF THE FALL® Fothergilla

Fothergilla has always been appreciated for its spectacular autumn color, but Legend of the Fall® fothergilla sets a new standard for the species with brilliant, glowing hues of orange, yellow, and red. Spring brings a crop of fragrant white flowers. This plant was also selected for its improved production performance, a boon since this plant will surely be in high demand by landscapers and garden designers. 

USDA Zone 5-9 (-20°F/-28.9°C)

Exposure: Full sun, part sun

Height: 4 - 5'

Width: 4 - 5'

Bloom Time: Spring

Flower Color: White

2. LOW SCAPE MOUND® Aronia melanocarpa

As cute as a button yet tough as nails, Low Scape Mound® aronia is an innovative dwarf selection that may be the closest thing yet to a perfect landscape plant. Adaptable to most any soil, this versatile little black chokeberry offers dark, glossy foliage, loads of white flowers in spring, black summer fruit, and intense red foliage in autumn. Ideal for low-maintenance mass plantings; think of it as Rhus 'Gro Lo' with multi-season appeal. Developed by Dr. Mark Brand of the University of Connecticut. Low Scape Mound aronia is the 2019 Landscape Shrub of the Year. Winner of the Boskoop Royal Horticultural Society Silver Medal

USDA Zone 3-9 (-40°F/-40°C)

Exposure: Full sun, part sun

Height: 1 - 2'

Width: 2'

Bloom Time: Spring

Flower Color: White

3. KODIAK ORANGE®  Diervilla

Another eco-friendly alternative to burning bush, Kodiak® Orange diervilla pushes fall color to the limits with its transformation to fire embers orange. In the spring and summer, new growth emerges, a showy russet-orange, which is accompanied by bright yellow flowers in summer. But late summer and fall are the real show when the entire shrub turns bright citrus orange. This easy-growing, vigorous North American native is unbothered by pests or diseases. Diervilla is one of the most adaptable landscape plants you can grow. You'll find it growing in dry shade on the shores of Lake Superior, south on the red clay soils of Georgia. Sometimes known as bush honeysuckle, which is just plain stupid as well as a misnomer, so just call it diervilla as the common name. Developed by Garden Genetics, Kodiak Orange won the Boskoop Royal Horticultural Society Silver Medal. 

USDA Zone 4-7 (-30°F/-34°C)

Exposure: Full sun, part sun, shade

Height: 3 - 4'

Width: 3 - 4'

Bloom Time: Summer

Flower Color: Yellow

Foliage Color: Orange

4. SCENTLANDIA® Itea virginica 

Fabulously fragrant. Sweetspire is beloved for so many reasons: it’s native, shade-tolerant, deer-resistant, has handsome foliage, amazing fall color, very showy flowers, and, of course, delicious fragrance. So how could Scentlandia® sweetspire improve on the classic? Better hardiness and better fragrance. It has the best fragrance of any Itea I've ever encountered. Year after year you'll get great fall color, along with a compact, refined habit. Winner of the Boskoop Royal Horticultural Society Silver Medal. I named it in honor of one of my favorite TV shows. 

USDA Zone 5-9 (-20°F/-28.9°C)

Exposure: Full sun, part sun, shade

Height: 2 - 3'

Width: 2 - 3'

Bloom Time: Early summer

Flower Color: White

Foliage Color: Green

5. SKY DEW GOLD® Vaccinium corymbosum

Bright yellow foliage is the backdrop for tasty summer blueberries. Things get even more interesting as the summer nights start to cool and the golden foliage starts taking on rich hues of orange and red. The transformation is simply thrilling; seeing something so colorful and cheerful puts a smile on my face. 

USDA Zone 4 - 8 (-30°F/-34.4°C)

Exposure: Full sun

Height: 2 - 4'

Width: 3 - 4'

Bloom Time: Late spring

Flower Color: White

Foliage Color: Chartreuse, Orange

6. GATSBY PINK® Hydrangea quercifolia

Just as The Great Gatsby is a classic of American literature, H. quercifolia is a classic North American native hydrangea. Long prized by savvy gardeners for its flowers and fall color, this sophisticated shrub deserves a wider market. Gatsby Pink is a remarkable oakleaf selection from Powell Gardens of Kingsville, MO. It boasts big, showy lacecap blooms that quickly transform from pure white to a delightful pink. The dark green foliage turns mahogany-red in autumn. It also reblooms a bit as well. 

USDA Zone 5-9 (-20°F/-28.9°C)

Exposure: Full sun, part sun

Height: 6 - 8'

Width: 6 - 8'

Bloom Time: Summer

Flower Color: White, Pink

Foliage: Color: Green, burgundy 

7. STAGHORN SUMAC Rhus typhyna 

Ok, so I cheated and added a seventh shrub, but it is so worth it. Rhus typhina, the Staghorn sumac, is one of my favorite native shrubs because it is one of the first to change color. The plant has fuzzy stems (like a stag’s horn), great orange to deep red fall color, and attractive red seed heads. I learned this plant as a young boy when my dad taught me how to make staghorn lemonade with its fruit—look it up. It’s commonly found along highways, forming dense clumps. At 70 mph, it's easy to see that each clump differs genetically in size, fall color, and fruit. Unfortunately, as it is a suckering plant that moves around a bit, most gardeners don’t have the room for a clump in their garden. Still, it does deserve greater use. There are several excellent cultivars that are garden worthy; ‘Disecta,’ aka ‘Laciniata,’ is grown for its attractive lacy cut leaves. Tiger Eyes or ‘Bailtiger’, is a yellow leafed selection of ‘Disecta’. This plant has all the wonderful attributes of the species but with bright yellow leaves that give summer-long interest.

Plants that Impress

It's the last day of January, and there is over a foot of snow on the ground here in Michigan, but spring is almost here. I say this because we turned on the heat in our greenhouses today. We are waking up our plants, so we can start propagating. 

Last year, I didn't post all that much, and I'm going to blame it on Covid. The pandemic had such a strong impact on the nursery business, and we've been incredibly busy trying to keep up with the demand for plants. My Delta account is full of cancelled tickets because I did not go to Italy, Germany, Korea, or the Netherlands as I had planned. On the positive side, I did spend more time in our trial garden, R&D greenhouse, and breeding fields evaluating plants. Today I want to share with you some of the plants that impressed me the most. Hopefully you'll see something you like, and the spring and summer photos will warm you up until spring arrives for real. Enjoy.

Let's Dance Sky View™ reblooming hydrangea

With each passing year, the genetics on our reblooming Hydrangea macrophylla keep getting better and better. Let's Dance Sky View hydrangea is one of the best yet. When we trial reblooming hydrangeas, we cut our plants back hard in that fall and once again in the spring. We do this to simulate untimely frosts. We also trial them for multiple years outdoors to make sure they'll bloom reliably in our harsh Michigan climate. If they bloom here, they should bloom anywhere. As you can see from the photographs below, Let's Dance Sky View excelled in both our trials, blooming nicely after being cut back as a container or having been frozen back in our field. When treated with aluminum sulfate or grown in acid garden soil, the flowers are an attractive sky blue color. 

Plants on the left were cut in fall, and the plants on the right were cut back again in spring.

Let's Dance Sky View hydrangeas flowered well after freezing back to the ground in 2020 and 2021.

'Viva Polonia' and Happy Jack® Purple Clematis 

So many consumers are disappointed by clematis, and it's not their fault. We set out to change that. You may not know it, but most clematis varieties on the market are selected for their flower size and how they perform for the grower, while we select ours based on garden performance. 'Viva Polonia' and Happy Jack Purple offer the very best in terms of garden performance. Here you can see how they looked in our trial garden last summer. Simply amazing! 

'Viva Polonia' clematis in our test garden 

Unique reddish-pink, star-like flowers on 'Viva Polonia' clematis

Happy Jack Purple is always looking happy and healthy.

Happy Jack Purple climbing on a Quick Fire hydrangea 

Puffer Fish™ Hydrangea paniculata

Puffer Fish™ hydrangea is a new selection developed at North Carolina State University that will be at retail in a year or so. Think of it as a super-sized Bobo hydrangea. Just like Bobo, it has full, lacy blooms from top to bottom, but the blooms are much bigger. The flowers open pure white and remain white until they transition in fall to a light green. It's also quite distinct in that new flowers continue to produce at the tip of the panicle, making it look as if the puffer fish flowers are spitting a bit of water. Puffer Fish has been a standout in all our trials. 

Puffer Fish hydrangea in our trail garden

At full bloom, it's hard to see the foliage on Puffer Fish.

An easy-to-identify bloom, Puffer Fish blooms spit a bit of water.

Wine & Spirits™ Weigela

We evaluate a lot of Weigela breeding each year, and one of the plants that shone was Wine & Spirits™ weigela, a new variety developed by Megan Mathey. What I love about this selection is its fresh greenish-white flowers. I've never seen this color before, and it just makes the flowers almost glow against the backdrop of their dark foliage. Growers and retailers will appreciate how well it looks in a container in the spring, and gardeners and landscapers will love how it looks in the landscape. Its unique flower color and overall flower power made it a standout in all of our trials. 

The greenish-white flowers of Wine & Spirits weigela appear to glow. 

A standout Weigela in our container trials

With lots of flower power, it lights up a garden even more than Wine & Roses.

Mr. Mustard™ Sorbaria

When we trial a new variety, we compare it to similar plants on the market, and if it's not better, we pass on the plant. Mr. Mustard™ Sorbaria sorbifolia was clearly brighter and more compact than 'Sem' and the others. The plant is at its best in spring when it is flushing, showing off its feathered hues of red and yellow. While other selections burn or get ragged by mid-summer, Mr. Mustard Sorbaria passes inspection with its clean green foliage and cherry-red fruit. Be aware this species sends out runners in loamy soils and should only be planted in areas where it is contained. Plant in an isolated bed, or keep it contained by growing it in a decorative container. It's plenty hardy and will overwinter just fine. Its white, conical summer blooms look a bit like astilbe and are wonderful for attracting pollinators. This is a tough, hardy plant that performs wonderfully when in the right location.

Mr. Mustard is a colorful container plant. 

At its best in spring, Mr. Mustard is colorful and compact.

In the summer the foliage turns to green, as opposed to brown like 'Sem.'

Sting™ Thuja occidentalis 

I am partial to columnar plants, so it is no wonder that Sting arborvitae captured my heart and imagination. This seedling selection of 'DeGroot Spire' that I sowed out some 15-18 years ago has remained exceedingly slim and attractive. Hardy and heat tolerant, use it as an exclamation point, or go all in and plant it in rows down each side of a road, like the Italians do with their narrow Mediterranean cypress, Cupressus sempervirens. Sting Thuja is a fun tree that is only limited by your imagination. 

Make a statement with Sting arborvitae, the super narrow Thuja occidentalis. 

Sting arborvitae in our test garden

That's all for now. Join me soon when we'll take a look at some new and exciting plants specifically for the South. Until then, stay warm.