Plants and Trends for 2009
by Doreen G. Howard

Saturated color, showy flower forms, and cold-hardy tropicals will be among the plant trends gardeners will see this year.

I’ve been a garden writer and editor for a long time, so I tend to view the annual promotional crescendo for new plants with a somewhat jaded eye. Every spring, hundreds of new plants are brought to market with great fanfare in hopes of enticing consumers. A few quickly become the “hot” plant because of their look or staying power. But many fade into oblivion, just like the pop divas who dye their hair pink and sing off-key.

This year, however, I believe more than the usual number of plants are worth gardeners’ attention because of the new directions in which breeders are going. Plants are crossing genetic boundaries, resulting in colors, growth habits, and cold hardiness unimaginable even a year ago.

It’s part of a horticultural revolution in which rules have changed. Drought-tolerant natives like coneflowers (Echinacea spp.) are no longer plain Janes, but blowsy hussies that stop traffic. Indiscriminate seeders, which responsible gardeners don’t allow in their yards, have cleaned up their acts. Tropical houseplants are moving outdoors to stay and developing texture and color for landscape effect.

Plant companies send me introductions at least a year in advance of release so I can test them in my garden in Illinois (USDA Hardiness Zone 4/5, AHS Heat Zone 5). In my travels around the country, I also talk regularly with breeders and plant hunters about developing trends and what is in the pipeline for the next five years or so. Here are some of the plants that have made an impression on me; more introductions are briefly described on page 17.

Coneflower Combustion

The purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea, USDA Hardiness Zones 3–9, AHS Heat Zones 9–1) and the other species in the genus have exploded with new forms, fragrance, and saturated colors. It’s difficult to recognize some of them as the drought-tolerant prairie natives gardeners have come to rely on in hot, dry spots. Newer cultivars are still tough but have bells and whistles like pom-pon flowerheads on ‘Pink Poodle’, or color-drenched red ‘Tomato Soup’, and heavily perfumed yellow ‘Mac ‘n’ Cheese’ - all from Oregon’s Terra Nova Nurseries - or spicy-scented double orange ‘Hot Papaya’ from Plants Nouveau.

These flamboyant selections may not be to everyone’s taste, but Chris Hansen of Great Garden Plants, which sells ‘Hot Papaya’, raves about its fiery orange color. “When I first saw the flower, my jaw hit the floor,” he says. ‘Hot Papaya’ was bred by Arie Blom, a Dutch breeder whose goal was not only vibrant orange double blooms, but strong stems for cut flowers that last up to 10 days. Blom’s working on 20 other selections that Plants Nouveau will be releasing in the next four years, including bi-color ruffled doubles and several with frills. Also available from Great Garden Plants is Echinacea Green Envy, a color breakthrough developed by Pride of Place Plants in Canada. A green flower is a novel occurrence, according to its breeder, Tom Veeder. Round jade green petals and deep green cones gradually mature to elongated petals with magenta veining near the cone, which also turns a purplish tone….

Encouraging Zone Denial

“Everybody wants a piece of paradise, even if big tropical plants end up in the compost after three or four months of enjoyment,” says Linda Guy, director of new products at Novalis, a marketing consortium that represents several plant growers. That’s why Novalis and others are busy developing tropicals with more cold-hardiness and combing the world for species that grow naturally in harsher climates.

In 2001, Guy gathered seeds from an exotic cold-hardy terrestrial orchid (Bletilla ochracea) she found on a mountainside in the Sichuan province of China. Named Chinese Butterfly (Zones 6–9, 9–5), it’s one of Novalis’s 2009 introductions. Its soft yellow flower color, willowy form, and pleated leaves add sophistication to any woodland setting.

Well-known plant hunter Dan Hinkley also is scouring the mountains of China, Vietnam, and Thailand for exotics that take the cold. Next year, he will release through Monrovia two Schefflera species that are hardy to USDA Zone 7. For most people, the genus Schefflera probably evokes images of houseplants, but these species grow into large shrubs or small trees (eight to 15 feet), making them stunning landscape plants. New growth on one is deep burgundy and the other features white downy hairs. In colder climates, either schefflera makes a striking container plant that can be brought indoors for the winter.

Tony Avent of Plant Delights Nursery in Raleigh, North Carolina, introduces two plants this season that also push the boundaries. An eye-catcher in any garden is ‘Godzilla’, a six-foot-wide Japanese painted fern (Athyrium niponicum var. pictum, Zones 5–8, 8–1). The silver, gray, and purple fronds grow over three feet tall and demand attention. It’s perfect for a shady patio as a low-maintenance focal plant. Avent also unveils another striking taro (Colocasia esculenta) this season, part of a series of unusual cultivars introduced in collaboration with John Cho at the University of Hawaii…

Flowering Shrubs and Roses

Forget spring-only bloomers, predictable foliage color, and boring roses. Breeders have answered gardeners’ prayers with plants such as Bloomerang lilac (Syringa ‘Penda’) from Proven Winners, which flowers repeatedly until frost. Mine was still in full bloom on October 27 when it snowed. The dark pink panicles are lush and fragrant, plus the tidy plant only grows to about four feet.

Honeysuckle is traditionally thought of as a southern or West Coast charmer. However, a new cultivar of southern bush honeysuckle (Diervilla sessilifolia), developed by the Landscape Plant Development Center in St. Paul, Minnesota and distributed by Novalis, gives northern gardeners the same flowers, plus striking variegated foliage. Named Cool Splash (‘LPDC Podaras’, Zones 4–8, 8–4), it features yellow trumpets held in panicles over emerald leaves edged with swaths of cream. Bushy in habit, it grows to about three feet tall and colonizes by underground suckers for mass plantings….

Rose breeders have given us disease-resistant, no-fuss cultivars in recent years, but frankly many of them are boring. That’s why ‘Cinco de Mayo’, White Out, and Amber Flower Carpet excited me with their appearance and performance. As a bonus, all were unattractive to Japanese beetles in my Midwest garden.
‘Cinco de Mayo’ (Zones 5–9, 9–5) is a 2009 All-America Rose Selection for good reason. The smoky lavender and rusty orange color of the flowers is stunning, and blooms smell like fresh-cut apples. I have this floribunda next to my front door in a bed of nine roses, and every visitor asks about ‘Cinco de Mayo’. Bred by Tom Carruth of Weeks Roses, the well-behaved rose is very disease resistant and requires no pruning to maintain an attractive round shape throughout the season.
Bill Radler built his reputation breeding the Knock Out® series of roses, but his newest offering White Out (‘Radwhite’, Zones 5–9, 9–5) goes well beyond the disease-resistant non-stop flowering that marked that series. Single pure white flowers blanket a compact shrub continuously. The contrast between thick, dark green foliage and white blooms is dramatic. Like all of Radler’s creations, White Out needs no deadheading, and, in fact, blooms better if spent flowers are not removed…

Fabulous Flowers

‘Tiger Eye’ gloriosa daisy (Rudbeckia hirta, Zones 3–9, 10–1), from Goldsmith Seeds, performed better than any other annual in my garden. The 18-inch plants branched without pinching and were covered with large golden daisies from planting until the first hard freeze. No deadheading was needed, disease wasn’t a problem, and the plants tolerated drought. The only maintenance I did was to add compost to the soil before planting. ‘Tiger Eye’ rewarded my minimal efforts with brilliant color, cut flowers, and landscape magnetism….

Photo credits: Echinacea ‘Hot Papaya’ courtesy of Terra Nova Nurseries; Bletilla ochracea Chinese Butterfly Rosa ‘ coiurtesy of Novalis; Cinco de Mayp’ courtesy of All-America Rose Selection.

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