Plant breeders bring out tempting new varieties all the time, promising bigger, brighter, earlier or more flowers in new colours and new shapes on plants with more disease resistance or hardiness. In my old job I used to have around 100 different varieties of newly introduced plants growing in the trial bed at any given time. I can’t come close to matching that in my garden, but I still like to keep an eye on what’s going on in the plant breeding world and pick out a few new things to try at home. In these blogs I review some of the new plants I’ve grown, and look at some of the trends in plant breeding.
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Latest posts
Heucheras for flowers and foliage
Heuchera ‘Berry Timeless’ Flowers of Heuchera ‘Berry Timeless’ with Pansy ‘Cool Wave Raspberry Swirl’ Anyone who has ever bought a heuchera plant, and a lot of people who haven’t, will be aware of the huge number of different varieties there are now. Over the past decade or so there has been such prolific breeding of…
Lobelia x speciosa ‘Starship Blue’
Lobelia x speciosa Starship series was first introduced a few years ago and I grew ‘Starship Deep Rose’ which was one of the first colours available. They were flamboyant and exotic looking plants and I was impressed with the amount of flower they had and how long flowering lasted. Starship Blue is a new colour…
Calla lilies (Zantedeschia)
Callafornia Red, Super Mac, Festival, Red Alert Calla lilies, or Zantedeschia, are very brightly coloured and have an elegant, modern look which is perfect if you fancy a change from the ubiquitous petunias and geraniums in your summer containers. The ones pictured above are some recent introductions that were on display at a trade show…
Echinacea ‘Pretty Parasols’
Echinacea ‘Pretty Parasols’ Every year it seems there are a lot more echinacea cultivars making their way onto the market, many of them in rich and vivid colours that are very tempting, but it has to be said that they aren’t always that easy to grow. Sometimes they don’t seem to be able to cope…
Primroses – the skill of taking a simple thing and making it complicated
Primroses are in bud and it’s a good time to buy them in garden centres. I’m taking a look at some modern varieties that even die hard fans of the wild plants might enjoy growing.
Hellebores – keeping up with the changes
Rodney Davey Marbled Group It’s hard to imagine a winter garden without hellebores now, though their popularity has really only taken off in the last decade or so. This is partly because in the past it was difficult to buy named hybrids, with many plants being raised from the seeds of either deliberate or natural…
Tulips – five new varieties
Once upon a time tulips used to be simple, though that time was long ago. You can still get simple tulips (I’m glad to say), but their popularity over several centuries has led to the breeding of endless variations. Flowers now come in a range of shapes that are categorised into 15 different groups. Unless…
Janice Shipp's Plant News 