Annual standouts

In a year when Mother Nature threw everything at gardeners, annual plant varieties had plenty of opportunity to prove their mettle.

Gardeners across Manitoba experienced heavy rainfall in the springtime followed by record heat in the summer. The month of September was Winnipeg’s hottest ever.

The new weather normal demands new plant varieties undergo rigorous evaluation in plant trials. Here is a look at some of the new annuals for 2025 that, given basic care, will stand up to soaking rainfall, high humidity, drought, sizzling heat and fierce winds.

MiniFamous Uno Funtopia calibrachoa for 2025 combines good looks with climate-ready performance. Popularly known as million bells, trailing petunia or mini petunia, calibrachoa comes in a wide range of colours and patterns, but MiniFamous Uno Funtopia Pink and MiniFamous Uno Funtopia Blue from Selecta One are standouts with double blooms that feature a unique tie-dye watercolour pattern. Look closely and you will also see a yellow star pattern in the centre of the flower.

Sun-loving and heat-tolerant, these new varieties attract bees and butterflies. MiniFamous Uno Funtopia has a mounded, trailing habit but what amazed me when I trialled it in my garden for the first time this year was its vigorous bushy habit that never became straggly or cycled out of bloom from June to October.

I grew mine in an exposed, full-sun location but no matter the weather, this new variety always looked beautiful. MiniFamous Uno Funtopia Pink is a deep enough shade of pink that it commands attention in a container design, but I’m not seeing blue when I look at MiniFamous Uno Funtopia Blue. To my eyes, the colour appears more like mauve.

Calibrachoa can be susceptible to aphids, mites and powdery mildew but I did not experience any of these issues with Funtopia.

I combined MiniFamous Uno Funtopia with two new varieties of fan flower — Scaevola Scala Cappello Purple and Scaevola Scala Cappello White — from Dummen Orange.

I know that scaevola with its fan-shaped flowers is a favourite for many gardeners but I have often been disappointed with varieties that produce stems that are too long and have too few flowers.

The Scala series has a bushy, semi-upright habit with flowers that cover the entire plant. Billed as having a medium-compact vigour, this new scaevola variety grew and grew. Indeed, all I needed to plant in a container with a 38-centimetre diameter was one Scaevola Scala and one Funtopia along with one thriller, which in my container designs is often dipladenia. The flowers never quit and now I’m a fan of fan flowers once again.

Angelonia has been growing in popularity in the past few years, but I confess I’ve been late to the party. But if ever an annual was well suited to hot, sunny, dry, humid and windy conditions, it must be angelonia. An abundance of new varieties come to the marketplace each spring but the one attracting the most attention by far is Angelonia AngelFlare Black from Ball FloraPlant.

New for 2025, AngelFlare Black is in a league of its own. It’s a never-before-seen colour for angelonia. Does the colour fade as the season wears on? No, as impossible as it may seem, the colour becomes richer and darker.

In addition, AngelFlare Black has an open, v-shaped habit. Initially, I wasn’t sure what difference that would really make in a container design, but the vase-like growth habit looks quite striking, especially if it is planted in the centre of a linear container such as a window box.

AngelFlare Black grows to a height of 20-30 cm. If there was one thing I could change, I wish this new variety had the same height as the Guardian series of Angelonia which grows to 41-46 cm tall. Black goes with almost every colour, so you’re sure to find this new variety an indispensable accent for your container combos.

If you were to combine AngelFlare Black and new AngelFlare Cranberry (the flowers really are cranberry-coloured) with new Guardian Angel Berry Sparkler with a tall grass or ornamental millet as the thriller and, say, your favourite white verbena and coleus variety, along with a well-behaved sweet potato vine such as Medusa Sweet Caroline Medusa Green, you would have a gorgeous container recipe that would stand up to the elements.

New Angelonia AngelFlare Cranberry and AngelFlare Black won a Retailers’ Choice Award at Cultivate ’24, the premier event for the entire green industry which was held in July in Columbus, Ohio. Sixty-two nominations were submitted which judges narrowed down to 15 top plants.

Many of us are familiar with Vermillionaire, a cuphea hybrid also known as the Firecracker Plant. A beautiful and substantial plant, Vermillionaire grows to a height of 46-71 cm and has a width of 30-60 cm. The new Enchantia hyssopifolia cuphea series from Ball FloraPlant is more compact at 25-36 cm tall and 30-41 cm wide.

In its small nursery container in spring, it presented as a few stems with tiny leaves and few flowers. I planted all three new varieties — Enchantia White, Enchantia Purple and Enchantia Lavender — at a slight angle along the edge of a large wire basket. I wasn’t feeling overly excited. But this new series is a genuine performer with impressive flower power. I also planted Enchantia in the ground and left it to fend for itself during the heat of summer. Suffice it to say, it surpassed my expectations.

This summer, on a visit to the trial gardens at Ball Horticulture in Chicago, I saw many new coleus varieties but the one that impressed me most was Coleus FlameThrower Adobo Pink. Suitable for growing in shade or sun, FlameThrower Adobo Pink grows to a height of 30-46 cm. This new variety has a narrow, wavy leaf shape that makes it quite attractive, but what really drew me in was the beautiful shade of burgundy with contrasting deep pink.

In the trial garden, FlameThrower Adobo Pink was paired with a variegated sedge as the filler and Mahogany Splendor Hibiscus as the thriller. Coleus is not drought-tolerant. It has higher water needs than any of the new plant varieties I have listed here, but it was thriving in full sun in Ball’s trial garden where plants must meet specific standards of performance.

Do you grow lobelia? It’s such a pretty plant at the beginning of summer but rarely stands up to the peak heat. If you have stopped growing lobelia for that very reason, take a look at the new Heatopia Dark Blue Lobelia. Like the name suggests, Heatopia offers improved heat tolerance. It also offers a tidy habit with an approximate height and width of 15-25 cm. The indigo colour is outstanding.

In the large container recipe I saw on a sizzling July day in Chicago, Lobelia Heatopia Dark Blue was combined with Ornamental Millet Jester, Salvia Mystic Spires, Geranium Super Moon Violet, Petunia Bee’s Knees, Alternanthera Purple Prince, Asparagus FuzzyFern Frizz, Lantana Shamrock White and Coleus Volcanica French Quarter.

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