Click below to listen to my 2 min. Garden Bite radio show: More 2020 plants
It never ceases to amaze me how plant breeders come up with some amazing choices. Feast your eyes on these beauties!
SunSeekers® Salmon Coneflower was introduced by Breck flowers and is hardy to zone 3.
Its semidouble flowers start as a lovely shade of salmon-pink with some soft yellow petals in the centre. As the aromatic blooms mature, their salmon-pink petals become pale pink and large, dark crimson cones form. Pollinators eat this flower’s nectar in summer, while songbirds feed on its seeds during winter. It grows about 2 ft tall and wide and tolerates all kinds of soil. If you remove the flowers, it will encourage more. I would let the last flush of flowers stay put for winter bird feeding.
Calibrachoa are some of my very favorite annuals to put in containers and there’s a new one with a lot of punch for a little flower… oh and it has a Hawaiian name. If you’re off a certain age, you’ll get that joke.
Moving on…. ‘Aloha Nani Calibash’ is so bright you’ll need shades to plant it! Calibash is the newest variety to the compact Aloha Nani Calibrachoa. It has a semi-upright growth habit to about 18 inches. It’s compact and ideal for containers or hanging baskets.
Breck’s is also offering a very unique new Dahlia. ‘Verrone’s Obsidian’ is really exotic looking.
It’s nearly black, windmill-like flowers with sunny yellow centers are 4–4½” across and are very attractive to pollinators. It’s not hardy to our climate zone but this baby is gorgeous!