Plant Trials
Registration Open for Ball Seed Customer Days
The annual Ball Seed Field Day and Landscape Day is reinvented this summer to accommodate a wider range of open dates and to welcome guests safely with adequate social distance. Ball Seed Customer Days will... more »
Captivating Color Combinations
I visited the Costa Farms spring trial in Florida during week 11 to evaluate the development and progression of annuals, perennials, and combination baskets from planting to maturity. In preceding articles I highlighted 2021 annual... more »
Exceptional 2021 Annual Introductions
Last month, I highlighted dynamic and early flowering annual introductions for 2021 from my late January visit to the Costa Farms spring trial. I returned in mid-March to evaluate additional new annual introductions following 14... more »
Update from UGA Trial Gardens
According to Brian Coker, garden manager of the Trial Gardens at the University of Georgia, they have successfully planted all trials and will begin taking ratings this week. To view ratings, go to http://ugatrial.hort.uga.edu. At... more »
Precocious Annual Introductions for 2021
The 2020 trial season begins at Costa Farms in Miami, Florida, and I visited in late January to evaluate the 2021 annual introductions. The beds were planted week 50, and I chose the adjective “precocious”... more »
Mark Your Calendars for the 2020 Michigan Garden Plant Tour
The 17th annual Michigan Garden Plant Tour offers commercial growers, landscapers, public garden employees, and other industry professionals the opportunity to learn about new and existing plant selections from the major breeding companies and to... more »
Bodacious Begonias
The prolific breeding and interspecific hybridization and introduction of new begonia cultivars, specifically in the past 10 years, is unprecedented. The commercial varieties available today originated from wild sources throughout the world, and the variation... more »
Enchanting Calibrachoas
Oh, what changes we have seen in the calibrachoa world since the breakthrough breeding and introduction of the calibrachoa Million Bells series by Suntory in 1993. This new category of plants is now a significant... more »
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