🌿 Meet the Plants of the Year 🌺

hey everyone are you getting excited about gardening again i know i am feels good so this is the time of year when we start finding out about a lot of people's new plants that are going to be coming out in the next year that we might see in garden centers and i love new plants i mean it gets me excited to see what's coming it gets me excited to try something new or see how i might work that into my garden um and frankly it's great for garden centers too so that they have some new things that they can show their customers however just because something's a new plant doesn't necessarily mean that it's better than something that's been around for a long time and so that leads to these various plants of the year programs so a variety of organizations and companies have their own plants of the year program and typically these feature plants that are tried and true in the garden that for whatever reason deserve a little nudge in terms of marketing me i think at the end of the day it probably is a marketing thing and i don't think there's anything wrong with that but it's a night it's a way to get a plant a little bit more publicity basically um so that we can all find out about it and hopefully go and grow it so proven winners has eight plants of the year that cover a whole variety of categories and i'm not going to feature all of them here but i will put a link in the description to where they have their plants of the year as well as all the plants that i'm talking about today so you can get some more information on any of them so proven winners chooses their plants of the year uh for a variety of reasons and using a variety of information they one take a look at the trends that they're noticing in the industry but they also talk to their retailers and their growers and get feedback from them about what they're seeing or what they want or what's looking good to them or what seems notable to them and that's how they come up with these plants of the year so when i think about proven winters i think about annuals they obviously offer perennials shrubs i believe they're moving into trees they have they run the gamut but to me i always think of proven winners and my first thought is that four inch pot with a beautiful annual coming out of it so their annual of the year is where we're going to start and that is supertunia mini vista pink star which is a white flower with a pink stripe on it now this is part of a renamed series these plants used to be called supertunia charm and what they are is smaller flowering varieties of petunias so if you used to grow something like one of my all-time favorites is still indigo supertunia mini vista indigo or indigo mini vista however it goes and also morning glory two really good ones i used to grow that as charm and i couldn't figure it out well they just renamed the series to better reflect that these are really vigorous plants that just have smaller flowers on them this is for me the variety of plant that i go to when i want to grow something that looks a little bit like a calibrachoa which in the proven winter's line is called super bells in a mixed container with other vigorous plants because super bells can be easily overwhelmed in a container with really vigorous plants it'll just get overrun and you also really can't grow those or they're not recommended to grow in the landscape so it's also not suitable for that so if you want a flower that's kind of like a calibrachoa or a super bells but you want to grow it with other vigorous plants or in the landscape then you look to that supertunia mini vista line this one is like i said it's a striped flower it's not frankly my favorite i don't generally go for that type but if you look at some of the container combinations that proven winters is suggesting for this it actually looks really good as a little um it's it's very interesting mixed in containers with other flowers it's you know a nice i don't want to use the word pop because i abhor that but you get what i'm saying it's a moment in these in these planters um it's you know full sun fertilizer you know the drill with uh with petunias now proven winners perennial of the year is one of my favorite plants it is cats pajama and epidura now nepota in general is one of my go-to garden plants it's one of those die hard stalwart plants that does so well in gardens it is deer resistant it is rabbit resistant it attracts pollinators it looks good most of the summer you can cut it back and get it to rebloom so you might have a couple of weeks where it doesn't look great but it's never laying around just doing nothing in your garden and cat's pajamas is a very small variety gets about 14 inches tall 20 inches wide max and it has flowers almost the entire length of the stem which is unlike some other nepetas you might have grown that only have them maybe at the top third or quarter of the stem because of its size it also is much less prone to flopping i mean you get a lot of floppage with some of those bigger varieties which is not great sometimes it's okay but it's not maybe what you want certainly if you're near a path or something like that now the flowers are described as indigo and i think we all learned by now that usually when a flower is described as blue it's really is a bluish version of purple and that's how i would describe these flowers it's like a blue lavender-ish color very pretty more color on it than i would say a lot of the other nepetas that i've grown and so now this is a zone three to eight full sun this is a common thing with nafco napa does give them lots of sun well draining soil is better i planted this last year in the new garden i think i planted 20 of them or so all in one big mass i can't wait to see how that it already looked great this year but i can't wait to see how that grows in and then two years ago ago i grew planted a few of those right on the edge of the patio when i redid a portion of the patio bed and those are still coming into their own but they look great right there this is definitely a plant you're going to want towards the front of your garden or maybe along a path because it'll get kind of swelled up just because it's small and compact napa is one of my top plants right now cats pajamas is currently my favorite nepota so proven winners shrub of the year this is their flowering shrubby year they also have a category for a landscape shrub their flowering shrub of the year is a budlia which is a butterfly bush called pugster blue now this is part of their pugster series which is a more compact series and the flowers on them are much different than your typical butterfly bush which tend to have sort of long skinny flowers pugster has these sort of it's actually a really good name because if you think of what that might look like that's what these flowers look like they're they're fat and thick so um it's a different kind of flower butterfly bushes they do what they say they do they attract butterflies like crazy it's a great way to bring butterflies into your garden punkster blue is like i said it's compact it's only about 24 inches tall by 36 inches wide full sun it is generally what you need for bud leah's they usually want pretty well draining soil as well now i don't grow any bud leaves i used to one of the problems for me in my zone which is zone five and in particularly in my microclimate which is one with the very cold springs bud least here wake up very slowly when i've had them in the past i mean you could be looking well into july 4th before you saw growth now the good news is once it gets hot they grow they just do their thing that is a zone five to nine they do have a recommendation on the website though that if you live in zone five you should not plant or prune this in fall and then the last winners plant of the year that i want to talk about is their hydrangea of the year um of course proven winners is really known for their hydrangeas they have really done a lot in the hydrangea breeding world and this is a plant that i saw i think in 2016 it's hydrangea tough stuff aha now um tough this tough stuff series which i love by the way are what they call mountain hydrangeas it's hydrangea serrana and these are hydrangeas that grow like in japan up in the mountain regions so what that means is that they do bloom on old wood um also blooms on new wood by the way but for the old wood buds they're hardier they're more bud hearty for those of us in these cooler zones so unlike some of the hydrangea macrophyllas that you might have grown in the past where the buds freeze out that's less of an issue in this case so tough stuff aha will go either pink or blue depending on the acidity of the soil that's something that's common with mountain hydrangeas so you can adjust that or you can just see what your soil produces but it has huge individual flowers and it's kind of a lace cap which i i'm really loving the lace caps are really beautiful and pollinators and insects just love them but the flowers on this are i mean like two inches across maybe and they're double and they actually almost look like a water lily shape they're so beautiful i saw it in california when they were introducing this plant uh like i said in 2016 and i made a bee line from like across a tent i saw that thing and i made a beeline over there now i have one in my garden i actually won it in a contest um a couple years ago in it has not done great but i'm not blaming that plant i put it in kind of a bad spot i put it in the area that is right next to the little cut through where the dogs walk through to access the lawn and in winter when you can't see where they're supposed to be walking they were walking over it but it's a beautiful plant i will definitely keep growing it and it's a hydrangea and i and i hope that more people discover some of these lace caps because i think it's a it's a different way to look at hydrangeas it's a little bit of something different and to me it's really just a lovely look in the garden so a lot of um specialty plant organizations also choose a plant of the year and one of those is the hosta growers association every year they feature a hosta and it's actually great that they do that because if you know anything about hostas you know there are i bet you there are more hostas out in this world than there are varieties of any other kind of plant it is unbelievable how many houses are and how do you wade through them all so it's nice to have somebody who sort of picks one and says maybe consider this one so the hosta growers association their criteria is that it has to be one that grows well in all regions it has to be widely available which is such a blessing because there is nothing more frustrating than being told the plant is great and then being told you also can't find it anywhere and they want it to retail for approximately fifteen 15 in most areas and that is actually really good because if you get into hostas you will quickly learn that there are hostas that you can buy for like a hundred dollars it's and then deer come and eat them but in any case the hosta of the year is one called rainbow's end and it's a variegated variety it's sort of what they consider to be a medium size it's like um it's like 11 inches tall by 20 inches wide so it's not going to eat your garden it's just kind of a nice work into the garden kind of plant so it has a dark green edges on the leaves and then yellow almost striped although it's not a stripe specifically a striped variety but i feel like there's a little bit of striping in there yellow in the center and that will fade to white now i also think because of that yellow center this is one that you're probably going to want to gear more towards more shade like most houses it's about zone three to nine i don't think you're going to have a hard time finding it every time i see a hosta of the year they have a great marketing program and i do see them everywhere looks like an interesting and interesting one to plant i would suggest with these variegated hostas especially ones like this that have really obvious variegation i think these look best either planted um like maybe pick up the color from that variation variegation so maybe think about planting this one with like a mostly yellow hosta or with some other solid colored hostas or plants like three of these in a group once you start mixing variegated houses with other variegated huskies i feel like that gets busy really quick so the national garden bureau which is a non-profit organization doesn't exactly do plants of the year what they do is feature a variety of categories of plants so every year they have a it's the year of whatever so this year and they do those in different categories they do a flowering shrub they do an edible they do a bulb a perennial and an annual and so this year the national garden bureau's categories are hardy hibiscus for the flowering shrub garden bean for the edible hyacinth for the bulb monarda for the perennial and sunflower for the annual and the way they choose these categories is that they have to be easy to grow genetically diverse and a good variety of breeding going on in them so there's some new and exciting varieties that are out on the market this is truly a marketing device really this is something that helps garden retailers sort of offer some focus on specific areas of plants but what's great is that the national garden bureau backs set up with a great deal of information and growing guides it also helps retailers because it has these really cool logos beautiful artsy logos that they have created and so it just really helps garden retailers draw attention to those but they back that up with all kinds of growing information which is actually really helpful so you can learn more about that category of plants the one that i'd like to just make a little bit of a note at is sunflower because i do think sunflowers are having a bit of a moment too but maybe that's just my perspective but here's a little confession i have never grown a sunflower well not really i have grown trials of sunflowers proven winners has sent me one year sent me a variety of sunflowers that they were growing to trial that's it those are the only sunflowers i ever grew at least as an adult maybe i grew them as kids when i was just one kid but i have never grown them and i think this year i'm going to add some along the edges of the vegetable garden we'll see so the next so the last plant that i want to talk about is the perennial plant associations plant of the year this is to me this is the big daddy this is a big deal in the industry and because it is voted upon by the members of the perennial plant association which includes some of the brightest minds in horticulture and and all the members get to i mean one of the benefits of membership to the perennial plant association is that you get to vote for the perennial of the year if you go through the list of perennial plants of the year you will recognize them because they are the plants that we grow in our garden year after year after year they are among the best plants that are out there period so this year's perennial plant of the year is calamintha nepota subspecies nepota which is a long name for a beautiful rather dimunitive plant so the criteria that the group is supposed to vote on is that it can be grown in a wide range of climates it's low maintenance which is one thing that i absolutely love has multiple season interest also has to be readily available in the marketplace because once again no one wants to choose a plant as the plant of the year that nobody can get so before i wax poetic about this plant let's just get the bad part over with it has a pretty limited range it's only zone five to seven my understanding is that it does not handle heat well so once you get past zone seven you're really pushing it on it i suspect if anything you might be able to push it down a bit but it sounds like pushing it to a hotter zone is probably not going to happen so it's small it's about 18 inches by 18 inches it gets covered in these tiny little white flowers tiny little bell shaped flowers that are white blue pink somewhere in there but the overall effect is they're so small the overall effect is of a white plant of a white flowering plant once you get closer i think you can see some of those distinctions but overall you're going to look at that and say oh it's white flowers it grows um ethereally i that's what i love about it it is airy and ethereal and it never feels heavy even though it's a you know it creates a dense plant it never feels heavy it sort of moves around in the wind a little bit and it just offers this amazing texture and beauty to the garden it blooms so long now it takes a little bit to get blooming um in the year but once it blooms it just keeps going it's so beautiful it is a pollinator magnet absolutely pollinator magnet nick mccullough has a large crop of praying mantises who hang out near his calamintha because so many bees are attracted to it and these praying mantises just have like an easy meal there but it is such a good plant in the garden so if you're wondering what the subspecies thing is about it just means that it's a naturally occurring variation to the species so that is the plant that we're talking about is this variation that occurred from the species now it's easy to grow i've been told it's easy to grow from seed i have never tried to grow it that way it does reseed and can self-seed so some people have actually thought it's a little bit of a nuisance because of the self-seeding of course as per usual there are ways around self-seeding which is that you cut those flowers off before they release their seed it's usually not a problem sometimes you might like that but self-seeding also means you can start it from seed too so there is a variety of this that actually was found in wisconsin by mike yanni many years ago this was actually the perennial wisconsin perennial plant of the year a decade ago or so and it is called montrose white now montrose white has a wider range of growing ability they say that montrose white can be grown from zone five to nine so that's one that you might wanna look for if you're in one of those warmer zones so the thing that montrose white is known for for one the flowers are a little whiter than the other one that we're talking about hence the white but it's sterile so you won't have if you're worried about that reseeding issue you can grow montrose white i actually grow montrose white exclusively in my garden i have it i planted you know that's another one i planted about 20 of them of in the new garden last year but i have them in other places i actually can't get enough of that plant all right you guys have a great day in your garden or planting your garden and we'll see you soon

Channel: The Impatient Gardener

Views: 47,230

Keywords: plants, new plants, plants of the year, calamintha, calamintha nepeta, Montrose white, proven winners, perennial plant association, hosta, hosta growers, national garden bureau, year of, garden, gardening

Id: BWPC-9_814A

Length: 19min 20sec (1160 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 12 2021