Don Davis: New flowers make their debut in 2010

You can expect new flowers to appear on the market every year. Several of the new varieties for 2010 seem good enough to mention here.

A new rose called Easy Does It is like a “flamboyant fruit salad for the landscape,” according to the catalog from Edmunds’ Roses, 335 S. High Street, Randolph, WI 53956 (www.edmundsroses.com). Its resistance to blackspot disease is rated as excellent.

This fragrant floribunda is the one and only award winner from the All America Rose Selections for 2010. The Easy Does It I tested in my garden last year had unique color. Its flowers were more than just orange; they were honey-apricot, peach-pink and mango-orange.

The new Halo White hollyhock would be a good choice for the back of your flower garden, where taller plants are at home. This is an old-fashioned, single-flowered hollyhock with large white flowers marked with yellow in the center of each bloom.

It grows six feet tall, and is shown in the catalog from Thompson and Morgan, P. O. Box 4086, Lawrenceburg, IN 47025 (www.tmseeds.com). Rust is a major disease of hollyhocks and nothing about resistance to rust disease is included in the plant’s catalog description.

The ultimate specimen plant for shade gardens could be the new Gentle Giant hosta from Klehm’s Song Sparrow Farm and Nursery, 13101 East Rye Road, Avalon, WI 53505 (www.songsparrow.com). It is a coarse textured plant almost four feet tall, much taller than most other hostas.

Gentle Giant’s leaves are blue-green, cupped and corrugated like cardboard. Flowers appear in midsummer. The catalog calls it “the sentinel of the hosta garden”.

The new Mesa Yellow blanket flower or gallardia is listed in many catalogs, including the one from Park Seed Co., 1 Parkton Avenue, Greenwood, SC 29647-0001 (www.parkseed.com). It is advertised as an American native with vigor enough to flower constantly while tolerating drought, heat, cold and high humidity.

Park’s catalog says Mesa Yellow is “as bright and beautiful as a summer day”. This perennial flower is one of the 2010 All America Selections award winners, and that indicates it will grow in almost any part of the country.

Mesa Yellow is the first hybrid gallardia you can grow from seed. It begins flowering 120 days after you sow the seeds, so be sure to get it started early if you expect it to bloom this year.

Another new flower found in multiple catalogs is a rudbeckia or black-eyed-Susan called Cherry Brandy. It is the first red rudbeckia that you can grow from seeds instead of potted plants.

Cherry Brandy is a biennial, so the plants you start indoors under fluorescent lamps in 2010 will bloom in your garden in 2011. One source of seeds is the catalog from Johnny’s Selected Seeds, 955 Benton Avenue, Winslow, ME 04901-2601 (www.johnnyseeds.com).

Davis is an Extension Agent for the Virginia Cooperative Extension. He can be reached by calling 455-3740.