Angelface Steel Blue Angelonia is a superior thriller that has built-in heat, humidity, and drought-tolerance.
Proven Winners
Colleen Zacharias / Winnipeg Free Press
Sweet Caroline Bewitched Green With Envy is a sweet potato vine that won’t overwhelm your container designs.
You’ll surely be swept away by the pink picotee blooms of Superbells Doublette Love Swept.
Proven Winners
Proven Winners
A new generation of ever-bearing strawberries with few runners, both the flowers and strawberries of Berried Treasure Red are edible.
September’s cooler temperatures are providing most plants with a chance to recoup after a hot and dry summer. Perennials such as roses, Russian Sage, hydrangea, helenium, rudbeckia, ornamental grasses and many other varieties are bringing new life to the garden.
As much as I am enjoying the perennial garden, it’s the annual plant varieties in patio containers that I’m most interested in assessing. Which ones will be invited back next year?
For me, the true litmus test for annual plant varieties purchased in spring is whether they succeed in making it to fall unscathed after a summer characterized by unrelenting heat, hair-raising humidity and rain that never came.
Superior performance, providing there is sufficient care and attention, describes a plant whose beauty is uncompromised when the going gets tough.
Here are some annual plant varieties that proved to be the best of the best throughout this year’s challenging summer and continue to be an attractive presence in the September garden.
Lemon Coral Sedum mexicanum — Possibly you are already familiar with this easy-care chartreuse sedum from Proven Winners, which has been available for a few years. It’s not to be confused with Angelina stonecrop, a perennial groundcover that is more golden yellow than chartreuse.
Lemon Coral has a mounding, trailing habit with a spread of about 35 centimetres and is ideally suited to many applications. Tuck it into your favourite small or large container recipe or at the front of a retaining wall. An unflappable filler, no matter the weather, Lemon Coral’s unique chartreuse colour and spiky texture looked brilliant this summer in part-sun window boxes and full-sun containers.
More than that, Lemon Coral’s mounding shape and spreading habit make it perfectly suited to solo containers, one of the top gardening trends for 2018 and 2019. Try growing solo by planting just one plant variety such as Lemon Coral in a low-profile planter bowl on a pedestal. Naturally heat- and drought-tolerant, Lemon Coral requires a minimum of maintenance.
Superbells Doublette Love Swept — I’m willing to go out on a limb and predict that this brand new calibrachoa will be a runaway bestseller next spring. I had the opportunity to trial this sun-loving annual in my garden this summer and it is still going strong.
Double, rose-like flowers in a deep pink with noticeably white picotee edges grow on dainty, cascading stems that are not nearly as fragile as they look. Superbells Doublette Love Swept combines nicely with Lemon Coral sedum because it has average water needs and doesn’t like to sit in overly moist soil. A moderate trailer with a somewhat mounding habit, Superbells Doublette Love Swept plays well with others and maintains flawless blooms all season long. A new release for next year, your patio planters are sure to attract attention with the addition of this pretty performer.
Berried Treasure Red Fragaria ananassa — Berried Treasure Red represents a new generation of delicious everbearing strawberries with few to no runners. A new variety for next year, I found that Berried Treasure Red, with its semi-double crimson coloured flowers and rounded leaves with slightly scalloped edges, attracted a great deal of interest from visitors to my garden.
Berried Treasure should be planted in eye-level or tall containers so that the tasty strawberries can be easily accessed for fresh picking. It requires little maintenance other than ensuring that it is watered evenly (avoid a cycle of excess moisture and too little moisture). Grow it in an area where it will receive full sun for more than six hours and stimulate strawberry production by adding an organic fertilizer.
Interestingly, Berried Treasure is classified as being hardy to zone 4a. It might be possible to overwinter this new variety in a protected area of your garden where there is plenty of snow cover.
Sweet Caroline Bewitched Green With Envy — Despite their usefulness and harmonious colours, I confess that I stopped buying sweet potato vine varieties several years ago because I didn’t care for the overly aggressive jumble of stems whose unchecked growth quickly dominated a planting scheme.
Now comes Sweet Caroline Bewitched Green With Envy, which has uniquely shaped bright chartreuse leaves with distinctively pointy tips and much greater substance than its more limp cousins. Purple veining and an improved compact habit make this a highly desirable trailing variety.
Solar Power Black Heart — A seriously black sweet potato vine with dark purple undertones, the large heart-shaped leaves are made all the more beautiful with prominent veining that resembles an almost quilt-like texture. This new variety is drought-tolerant and heat-tolerant and a must-have for moody container designs. I paired Black Heart with silvery Senecio Canadensis Angel Wings and Maidenhair fern.
Bee Bold Bidens — Strongly upright, this new red bi-colour bidens is excellent for attracting pollinators spring through fall. Kelley Liebzeit, a gardener who lives in Lac du Bonnet, says that it performed well all season long and required minimal maintenance. "The bees loved it," she says.
Sun-Fill Green Hybrid Sunflower — Liebzeit purchased the seeds for this groundbreaking new sunflower variety from Johnny’s Select Seed. Developed by American sunflower breeder Tom Heaton, Sun-Fill Green grows to a height of 150 to 170 cm and produces bright green flower heads unlike any other sunflower variety available.
Recommended as a cut flower, the geometric blooms measure seven to 10 cm across. Liebzeit entered Sun-Fill Green in the Agassiz Garden Club flower show in August and won Best in Show. Next year, she plans to grow both Sun-Fill Green and Sun-Fill Purple.
Angelface Steel Blue Angelonia angustifolia (Summer Snapdragon) — New for next year, Angelface Steel Blue is a tall annual (60 to 90 cm) well-suited to a thriller role in containers. What really makes this new angelonia stand out, apart from the highly patterned mauve-purple blooms stacked one upon the other, is that it has been bred especially for extremely sunny, hot and humid conditions. An easy-care annual, Angelface Steel Blue bloomed continuously this summer in my garden.
Diamond Mountain Euphorbia — We’ve all grown Diamond Frost Euphorbia in our containers. The tiny white blooms that float on impossibly slender but erect stems add an ethereal quality to every design. Diamond Mountain is a shrub-size (60 to 90 cm) variety that is heat- and drought-tolerant and deer-resistant, too. I was delighted with this variety which pairs well with containerized shrubs and tall annuals such as Angelface Steel Blue Angelonia.
Tuff Stuff Ah-Ha Reblooming Mountain Hydrangea — First, it’s important to know that Tuff Stuff Ah-Ha is a zone 5 hydrangea.
A new release for next year, I was thrilled to trial this new hydrangea variety. Although not hardy to our growing zone, Tuff Stuff Ah-Ha brings star quality to an annual container arrangement with large blue or pink lacecap flowers comprised of waterlily-like double florets with slightly pointed tips. Blue flowers are achieved with the addition of a soil acidifier.
New for next year and hopefully available locally, Tuff Stuff Ah-Ha is worth growing as an annual. I paired mine with Diamond Mountain Euphorbia and Sweet Caroline Bewitched Green With Envy. I do plan to try to overwinter Tuff Stuff Ah-Ha in my garage.
colleenizacharias@gmail.com
