George's Current Ramblings and Readlings

The Best New Perennial Flowers of 2025

January 28th, 2025

   A new line of high-performing mixed-species peonies, a super-sized new salvia, and several new varieties of pollinator favorites highlight the list of interesting new perennials debuting in the 2025 growing season.

Itoh Garden Candy peonies Candy Apple, left, and Simply Scrumptious, right. Credit: Plants Nouveau

   Growers, local garden centers, and other plant experts picked the following 12 choices for my annual January four-part, best-new-plants series.

   The article on best new edibles of 2025 appeared Jan. 14, while the rundown on best new annual flowers posted last week. The series ends next week with a look at the best new trees and shrubs of 2025, posting Feb. 4.

   The following new perennial flowers are available online and in some plant catalogs and will start showing up in local garden centers in April.

   The details:

Garden Candy series of Itoh peonies

   Itoh peonies are a cross between herbaceous and tree peonies that yield the best of both worlds – bushy, disease- and deer-resistant plants with big flowers in lots of colors. They’re named after Dr. Toichi Itoh, the Japanese botanist who made the first cross decades ago.

   Enter Donald Smith, a retired atmospheric research physicist who took on a retirement project of breeding new varieties of these “intersectional” Itoh peonies in new colors and double-flowered versions.

   He’s been working on it since 2010 and has come up with a line of 11 impressive plants being introduced this year under the Garden Candy name by Alabama-based Plants Nouveau. 

   “We have deemed Don the ‘Willy Wonka of peony breeding,’” says Angela Treadwell-Palmer, Plants Nouveau’s founder and co-owner.

   Treadwell-Palmer especially likes the Candy Apple variety – a double red – and the Simply Scrumptious variety – a double bloomer with lemony-peach petals and a cherry blush.

   Other Garden Candy entries include Evie Jane (a double pink), Pineapple Fizz (bright yellow), and Summer Sunset (peach).

“These also do not attract those annoying ants or fall in the mud after a hard rain,” Treadwell-Palmer adds. 

   All of the Garden Candy varieties grow nearly three feet tall and four feet wide, die back to the ground in winter, and do well in full sun to part shade.

The Best New Annual Flowers of 2025

January 21st, 2025

   A butterfly-magnet new ageratum, a shrub-turned-annual-flower called dampiera, and a new sunflower with a thousand blooms headline the list of interesting new annual flowers debuting in the 2025 growing season.

Ageratum Monarch Magic.
Credit: Penn State Trial Gardens

   Growers, local garden centers, and other plant experts picked those and more for the four-part, best-new-plants series that I compile each January – a good month for gardeners to plan what to plant in the coming season.

   The article on best new edibles of 2025 appeared last week, the best new perennial flowers of 2025 will post next Tuesday, and the best new trees and shrubs of 2025 is scheduled to post Feb. 4.

   Some of the following 20 new annual flowers are available in seeds or plants online and in some plant catalogs. Most also will show up in plant form in local garden centers beginning in late April to early May.

   The details:

Ageratum Monarch Magic

   This hefty new pollinator-attractor is the favorite new-for-2025 annual of no less than three flower-watchers: Alyssa Collins, director of Penn State’s Southeast Agricultural Research and Extension Center in Lancaster County; Pamela Bennett, the Extension educator in charge of Ohio State University’s flower trials, and Stephanie Vincenti, Ball FloraPlant’s marketing manager.

   Collins says that in Penn State’s 2024 flower trials, Monarch Magic “came right out of the gate flowering immediately and stayed in constant flower all summer, right up to Halloween.”

   She adds that it lived up to its name, too, attracting numerous butterflies and hummingbirds.

   Bennett wrote in Greenhouse Grower magazine that Monarch Magic “was incredible in many ways. It’s a vigorous grower with more of a vining/spreading habit than most ageratums. One plant can get to around 2½ feet tall and wide. It is loaded with flowers that continually bloom and does not need deadheaded to look good.”

   And Vincenti adds that the variety is a vigorous grower with excellent heat resistance.

   I also test-grew Monarch Magic last summer and was impressed with its solid growth, flower power, and pollinator-drawing ability.

   The plant performs well in full sun to light shade.

Begonia Birthday Bash ‘Chocolate Cherry.’
Credit: Penn State Trial Gardens

Begonia Birthday Bash ‘Chocolate Cherry’

   Penn State Extension educator Krystal Snyder evaluates hundreds of new flowers at Penn State’s Trial Gardens in Lancaster County, so it’s hard to single out just one as the best of the lot.

   In the 2024 trials, though, Snyder was most impressed with Syngenta Flowers’ new begonia called Birthday Bash ‘Chocolate Cherry.’

   Snyder says ‘Chocolate Cherry’ is an excellent double-flowered variety for the shade that’s particularly showy for its dark foliage and bright-red flowers.

   It earned a perfect five-out-of-five rating all season long and ended up as the top-performing begonia out of the 89 versions trialed last summer.

   ‘Chocolate Cherry’ is also very heat-tough, does best in shade to part shade, and has a mounding habit about 12 to 18 inches tall with a nearly two-foot spread.

The Best New Vegetables, Herbs, and Fruits of 2025

January 14th, 2025

   It’s another new year, and the garden is waiting in the wings to be filled in just a few months with fresh, home-grown produce.

The Purple Tomato really is purple inside and out… not just purple-skinned.

   This is a good planning time – not only to order seeds for the 2025 edible garden but also to hone in on the best varieties of vegetables, herbs, and fruits for May planting.

   Lots of new varieties are debuting in 2025 to add to the tried-and-true.

   Let’s have a look this week at some of the best new edibles hitting the market.

   Next Tuesday, I’ll post the best new annual flowers of 2025, then on Jan. 28 the year’s best new perennial flower introductions, and finally on Feb. 4 the year’s best new trees and shrubs.

   Some of the following new edibles are already available online and in catalogs. If any strike your fancy, it’s best to order ASAP before the supply dwindles.

   Others will show up in local garden centers – seed packets already and plants in April and May.

The Purple Tomato

   This purple-fruited cherry tomato generated much news (and controversy) last year when it debuted as the first bioengineered food crop marketed mainly to home gardeners. The fruits get their purple color (both skin and flesh) from purple snapdragon genes inserted into a standard cherry-tomato variety.

   The Purple Tomato (that’s the official name) came out a bit late for 2024 seed orders, so this is the first January that gardeners will be able to order in time for indoor seed-starting (if the supply isn’t already gone). It’s available only by direct-ordering from the producer, California-based Norfolk Healthy Produce.

   2025 seeds went on sale Dec. 2 and were expected to sell quickly despite a price of $20 for 10 seeds (plus shipping).

   Besides the fruit-color novelty, the attraction is a nutrition makeup that’s exceptionally high in antioxidants – on par with the so-called “superfood” levels found in blueberries, according to Norfolk Healthy Produce.

   Plants are heavy fruit producers, the fruits mature almost black, and the flavor is described as better than average by some but bland by others.

   Once you buy seeds, you can save your own to start your own in future years.

Read George’s trial experience with The Purple Tomato

Cherry tomato Tonatico

   On the more conventional cherry-tomato front, Tonatico is a new red-fruited cherry tomato that performed well enough in trial gardens last year to earn a 2025 All-America Selections award for the Northeast region.

   AAS judges say this Bejo USA introduction is an excellent yielder, is disease- and crack-resistant, and has a “sweet and robust” flavor.

   Plants are indeterminate (i.e. they produce continually until frost) and grow about five feet tall. Each plant can produce up to 200 nearly two-ounce round fruits, which ripen about 60 days after transplant into the garden.

Gardening Trends of 2025

January 7th, 2025

   Nature-friendly gardening seems to be graduating from mere trend to a lasting and widespread mainstream movement.

Certified Wildlife Habitats like this one at Kevin Kelly’s Lower Paxton Twp. yard are trendy heading into 2025.

   That’s the prevailing development that gardening trend-watchers see as we head into 2025, with interrelated facets of that movement – including native plants, pollinator gardens, and less-perfect lawns – all growing and dominating how we view yard care.

   Garden Media Group’s 2025 Gardening Trends Report dubs it “nature’s renaissance.”

   Here’s a look at that movement along with other gardening trends shaping up in the coming year:

Nature at gardening’s forefront

   Katie Dubow, president of Chester County-based Garden Media Group, says nature’s comeback is in part a backlash to the “clean, green, tidy, mulched and weed-free” standards that come with our higher-than-ever percentage of urban and Home Owners Association-governed landscapes.

   “The good news is that there is a burgeoning movement to reintegrate natural elements into these highly regulated and often concrete-heavy environments,” Dubow says.

   Those include tree plantings, community-greening efforts, and a shift toward plants and plant care that take the local eco-system into account.

   “This renaissance is not merely about aesthetics,” Dubow says. It’s mainly about “creating better environments for both nature and humans, enhancing storm-water management, cooling, improving air quality, reducing noise, boosting mental health, reducing violence, and supporting urban wildlife.”

   The movement also means a more diverse plant lineup in home gardens, one that Pennsylvania Horticultural Society Vice President of Horticulture Andrew Bunting says leans heavily on native and pollinator-attracting varieties.

   Bunting also mentions enviro-friendly practices such as “leaving the leaves” (using fallen leaves as natural mulch to encourage overwintering insects), shrinking or replacing chemically managed lawns, and installing “bee hotels” to support local bee populations.

“Modern meadows” are slightly more planned than wild meadows but still low-care.

A move toward “almost meadows”

   Hand in hand with the nature movement, says Katie Tamony, chief marketing officer and trend-spotter for Monrovia growers, is replacing lawns with what she calls “modern meadows.”

   These are flower-heavy, low-input, and somewhat designed gardens of pollinator-friendly perennials, native grasses, and even edibles as opposed to a more hands-off wild meadow.

   “The modern take on this natural garden style has the appeal that people seek with native plants, but it’s better behaved and easier to care for,” she says. “You’ll still have the feeling of a wild meadow… just on an easier scale.”

   Alyssa Hagarman, Hershey Gardens’ horticulture manager, sees the same trend, except she calls it “meadow-inspired landscapes.”

   “The plants in meadow-inspired landscapes require less maintenance, something that home gardeners find appealing, plus it has other advantages,” she says.

   Among them: less water needs, no spraying, more interest to pollinators and wildlife than lawns, and flexibility to add annuals (including money-saving self-seeding ones) to max out the bloom all season.

Read George’s column on how to turn lawn space into meadow space

In Case You Missed It…

December 17th, 2024

   The 2024 gardening season was another hot one that brought us plant- and lawn-stressing hot, dry spells but also a few rain dumpings and other weather curveballs.

We saw a lot of this during our hot, dry spells of summer.

   And we saw another new bug (box tree moth), the spread of a misbehaving worm, and the arrival of the first bioengineered vegetable crop aimed directly at home gardeners (The Purple Tomato).

   I thought I’d close out the year by highlighting some of what I wrote about in 2024, giving you second-chance links in case you missed a post of interest.

   Here you go… and happy 2025!

On this website (free, unlimited reads):

   I start every new year with a look at what experts say are some of the hot gardening trends of the coming year. See Gardening Trends of 2024.

   I then wrote four e-columns highlighting some of the best new plants hitting the market.

Best New Vegetables and Fruits of 2024

Best New Annual Flowers of 2024

Best New Perennial Flowers of 2024

Best New Trees and Shrubs of 2024

   Another best-plant rundown I do every year is plants that have won awards. See Award-Winning Plants of 2024.

   And these are some of the other topics I wrote about in 2024…

The Purple Tomato really is purple inside and out… not just purple-skinned.

   How those controversial new Purple Tomatoes with the snapdragon genes performed and tasted

   The spread of a recent type of worm – the so-called “jumping worm” – that’s a threat to our gardens, not a help

   A rundown on what the new USDA Cold Hardiness Zone Map means for Pennsylvania gardeners

   A collection of tips on how to navigate our increasing erratic weather in the garden

   A look at why it’s important to seek out “survivor plants”

   Why it’s no longer good enough for us gardeners to get just one round of blooms from our shrubs

   The story of how and why the Fruition Seeds company decided to start giving away its seeds instead of selling them

   How to head off plant problems by listening to what your plants are trying to tell you

   A primer on how to prune landscape plants into more interesting ways than basic boxes and balls

   A rundown on the eight most important things I’ve learned about growing vegetables

   A look at 10 of the best cutting-edge annual flowers worth trying in your garden beds and pots

   How my “mini-meadow” finally flourished in year three, only to completely fall apart in summer

   A look at the latest threat to our boxwoods – the box tree moth

   A post that’ll help you evaluate (and improve) your “bounce-backability” in the garden

On the PennLive.com website