Top Trial Plants: 2024 and Before

Good afternoon everyone. Thank you for joining our top trial plants for 2024. And before, and before I do the introduction, I'd like to tell you a couple of things. The second attachment you received on Friday, I mean the second E mail that you received on Friday had the attachments for what Ann is going to be talking about today. If you have any questions, could you please put them in the chat box at the end of the program? There will be an evaluation poll for you to do it. If you wouldn't mind

doing it for us, please. Tice has been a master gardener since 2000. She is an advanced master gardener. Won several Master Gardener awards. We Chicago Tribune Glorious Garden Award twice for her Champaign garden and a Nationals Scott's Walmart Award. She enjoys writing garden articles, lectures, and sheer joy of gardening and geology, like she says. After all that, a family tree, she started trial program and has run it for 23 years. She would love to have help from the master gardener volunte

ers this year for the trial area to see what has been new for 2025. And I'll leave it to Anne. Okay. Well, thank you. Thank you for the introduction. I'm trying to figure out how to screen share and there it is. So, this will take a little bit of time. But anyway, what what I'd like to tell you is some background information and that is. Okay. How are you seeing that? Are you seeing that full screen? It doesn't show it on mine, no. You are still in the Powerpoint mode? Not in the presentation mo

de. It says, I'm screen sharing. Let's see. Yeah, I'm working on it. Go up here. I got I've got my show there. I've got my check Help here. All right. Good. Okay, Does that work? Yes. Perfect. Okay. Well, what I want to tell you first is yes, there's two handouts. The first one which has just about all the names that I'll be going over, it says it's the best of the 2023 trial plants. That actually includes half of them which are just coming out this spring, we get things a year ahead, and that a

ctually goes over some of the 2024 ones. What I'll be talking about is general information first, how we do the trials, what's involved. Then I'll go into the top gold medal winners silver and bronze. The last part is some that were not spectacular for us, although most plants were pretty darn good. Then the very last part is just some pictures of other new plants. They did not win awards, but they were pretty and they're improved. And I thought at least you can see the pictures of it. The other

handout is the best of the best from 20 006 to last year. That is mostly gold medal winners because there's a lot of winners. We get excellent plants, they're new, they're improved, they're hybrids. But I wanted you to know about that. Then there's some weird things. I think most of your muted, which is great and I'll answer questions at the end. The University of Illinois has some very strict rules. I can no longer use other pictures unless I have permission from the person that took it, or it

has to be non copyrighted. I couldn't use a lot of my good garden jokes because I didn't know about the copyright. So what I did this time is I used my old ones. Most of the photographs are mine anyway, and I used AI. I've been working with two programs to generate images. As you'll see, AI is great in many things. I wish they could, I wish I could spell it. Can't spell. It's a language learning model, but it can generate good images. In fact, the image behind me I generated this morning, I wan

ted a spring garden. Have to feed it a lot of information to get a good picture. And you'll see some of the other ones. This one's supposed to look like a photograph. I'm looking forward to the day when I can just feed information to AI and it will make me a garden design. Okay, so let's get started with the talk. Spring is here. It may not feel like getting champagne right now, but it really truly is supposed to be here. Anyway. It'll be soon. And when spring is here, I'm so excited, I wet my p

lants. I've been testing out flower since I could walk. This is me snagging a marigold and running off with it. And as she mentioned, as Jenny mentioned, I've done I started the trial program with Sandy Mason and I've run it for 23 years now. Annuals do make an impact of color, and they flower most of the season. They pull the season through, which I think is awesome. This is in Disney. And those are all annuals. That's one of their flower and garden shows. And they go all out to put in massive

quantities of annuals, but they also help the pollinators, not all of them, but many of them. This is one we tried a year ago, Calibricoa, Super Bell's Magic Pink Lemonade. When we tried it, the name was Prism pink lemonade. I'm having a hard time adjusting, but they changed the name on us and that bee is stuffing himself in there and has pollen on his legs. When I give the slides, somebody has their audio on. If you could turn that off, that'd be great. But when I give these slides, if I put a

red new in the presentation and then in the handout it will say if they're new, the red new that's coming out just now. The other thing I want you to be aware of is I got tired of typing everything on the handout. And also for the Powerpoint, if there's a capital S, it's proven winners part of the name for the plant, if it's calibrachoa and I abreviate that means super bells. And then the rest of the plant name, if it's Petunia with an s it means supertunia. And the rest of the Petunia name for

proven winners Verbena, if it has S after it means superbena. These are super plants. And now you know it because of all those names. Where do we get these trials from? Well, or where they're done? They're done at the Idea Garden. University of Illinois, Champaign County Master Gardeners in Urbana. And it's an all volunteer program. As you probably know in the trials program, master volunteers research assessed and evaluated donated plants. We make a design on a blank slate. Educate the public i

f possible. And the idea of garden is visited by a lot more than just the public. By the University of Illinois professors and students. We share experiences, but we in no way endorse any company I have to say this and I don't have any conflict of interest with any company either. I happen to be more familiar with the proven winners just because we've trial them for so many years. When we first started this, Sandy had me call a whole bunch of companies, Syngenta, Danziger, all sorts of them invo

lved. They wouldn't allow us to get free plants and trial them. So, I'm lucky, and we are lucky that we still have proven winners. Where do we get the plants? Well, as I mentioned, we get them from proven winners and they are really active in hybridizing and trying to make the best plants. For a number of years, we got them from Ball Horticultural and I'd love to have the difference of it. I'll show you one slide to one of their plants. In the handout, there will be listings of plants that were

made by Ball. Many of them are new or not yet released. As I mentioned, we are one of now only 30 proven winner trial gardens. There used to be 47, which included some in Canada. About a year and a half ago I looked and there were 40. Now there are 30 in the US and two in Canada. We're exceptionally fortunate to be allowed to trial them. The most are big universities. Some were large metanic gardens that get the trial plants. We started in 2001 and started making detailed records in 2006. Hartle

y Gardens, somewhere around there. They pulled the plants from Hartley Garden even though they have other great trial plants. I think because they didn't turn in the information they wanted. And that's why the detailed records and the comments, particularly comments that the people in the trials areas the volunteers have made in the last couple of years, I think are the only way that we've continued to get the plants, as many others have been cut. These are some examples of quotes they lifted di

rectly from what I handed in this January and February. I'm going to show you these plants in a bit, but this was one we were wild about. Must have love it. Gorgeous color. Anyway, they just quoted it directly. This is a biden campfire marshmallow. I'm in love with that one. It was simply outstanding. And a giant, tidy, neat mound of starry white blooms. They eat that stuff up. And all five of these were direct quotes from us about the proven winter company. They started in 1992 with three nurse

ries and those still are the growers. There's one in New Hampshire where we get ours from. There's one in Carlton, Michigan. And I can't remember if the other one is in the west part of Michigan. I'm not sure about that now. But they work with international top breeders to try to improve the plants, things such as being earliest to flower a certain form or shape or habitat. They want the consumer to have success. They breed these flowers and try to get ones that are disease resistance, et cetera

. They don't cover just animals. We used to get some perennials and hook and other things, and they have donated shrubs several years ago. All these plants go through lengthy trials, more for perennials and shrubs, the annuals, at least six plus years before we even get them. Less than 3% of all those plants make it proven winters, makes proven winters and proven selections. The difference between those are proven selections may be plants that are specifically good for a certain area like the So

utheast where it's hot and humid and they don't have 32 degree temperatures with wind like you might be having today. But most of the proven winter ones we get are tested across the whole country. They're supposed to do well in most areas including even Florida. The trials we get many are new angles and they're hybrid. This is an example I went to the ball trial area of balls interspecific hybrid in patients. They do not get downy mildew. They are big plants like the New Guinea in patients, but

they have more flowers and they have several different names for big bounces, the really tall inpatients and some patients the bounce and big bounds I found I love, but I found they were hard to find because the local Chicago, etc. decided they didn't really want to grow them. Because they come in and they grow so fast that they have a hard time managing them. They get tall and their space before they're sold out, May into June, however many, many places. Including one of my other favorites be

sides the local nurseries and Champaign Urbana the Sunrise Nursery up in Grant Park carries the sun patients. Those were winners and they are great plants. Now, how do we get them? We get them. These boxes are delivered and inside are trays, plug trays, They're about the size of the thumb. And they're sent to us in late March. We can't wait because they're due the week of March 25. Haven't seen them yet. It's exciting when they come in, especially the new ones. And that's my granddaughter, and s

he gave me permission to use this picture and her dad, they're grown at the University of Illinois greenhouse now, and we have great people that run the greenhouse. And also the manager from University of Illinois. And they're going to be trying to do even better this year. Last year we returned to the University of Illinois and it did pretty well. The plants are photo handouts are made on the colors and the sizes of them, the height, the width, and all that used to be sent out to sections. I wi

ll be sending out that information for the extras. Then now that we have five trials area, that's quite a bit of plants and they eat up a lot. Designs are made, these are cutouts that I made for printing out the plant tags. And that was the design for wet trials last year. This is complicated looking. No one knows what I'm talking about unless it's me because I did it. I try to do little color pencils that makes other people nuts, but I can't tell the difference otherwise. This was the design fo

r the trials area last year with the heart in the middle of that petunia up vivid organ and it's like pandas going nuts. In 2023, we have 48 different varieties. We usually get about that much. 22 were new and being released this year, and I'll be talking about some of the new ones in the year. I won't be covering things like the salvia rock and blue Suede shoes that's been out. I'm mostly going to be covering either if they won a gold medal or bronze or silver, or if they are a new plant. Salvi

a blue Suede shoes is a great plant. It didn't win awards, it's been out already, so I won't be covering all of those in 2024, we are getting 48 varieties from proven winners. 30 are going to be new out of the 48 and we'll be out in 2025. As I mentioned that come in is plugs, they're not seed grow, they're tissue culture grown. When we get the new and the ones that are out, often they'll send another plant to compare the new one. For instance, this year I've heard we're going to get some fa prob

ably will get one of the Fia that has already been out so we can compare how that grows and X. The idea garden is where we have it and I ran into Tabitha Elder last year. We had some fun with that picture. We were everywhere that day. New designs are created each year on a clean slate. There's really not much there, I weaseled some in the background here. I weaseled some shrubs from proven winter several years ago. And we have shrubs on the north side service bury. But most of the time we're st

arting out with nothing there. Now there's five planning methods. As the design is scraping out, the plants are set out. Now you're going to notice there's some happy faces here. It was too much work for me to get everyone in group photos to sign the consent form. Get it back to me. It's a cumbersome thing. I'm cheating here. But look how happy they are. I am so grateful to all the volunteers that come out on our one to two, usually two days of planting. I would very much love it if we could get

help during the whole season. You can see how the new ones are going to do for next year, and also particularly everyone's help, if possible, on May 14 and 15th, we're going to plant in two days before we move things out of the greenhouse, which I'm hoping that will be that Friday so I can restock the plants that we don't use or don't have room for. They also put in and around the garden soon after we get them and I know what has survived and shipping, so I get better counts on the numbers. I h

ope to contact more of the sections to ask if they can take some of the extras. It has been extremely helpful to have them planted in other areas. I'm going to show you a picture on the east border last year where they planted some of our mini vista tuna. And they did a great job in the combination. The gazebo saved our skin on a couple of plants because we had a problem with a pot that wouldn't drain. It's as easy as one to three. Wow, that was last year in July. I do want to mention some of th

e pots we have because we've learned a little bit. We got them Two years ago, I was out looking for containers. Many of the plants, particularly the Calibrachoa, and now others would have done better in the past years to be put in a container. I went on the lookout for them. The idea I got came from Michigan State University. All of these are pots. But can you imagine how much work it would have been when we had those 100 degree days? Trying to get these watered every day? That's a huge amount.

So I looked for other containers, I knew we needed large ones. This didn't seem like that would work. I was talking to these people at Four Star Greenhouse in southeast Michigan and they grow many of the annuals and other proven winter things. Well, they did not have to use for these pots anymore, and they agreed to sell them to us for a greatly reduced price. They're called drop and self water and containers and they're pretty interesting. They have water meter in the air. We have to check it e

very now and then. It doesn't always work. If three water droplets are up, it's full. The reservoir inside of it, you'll see in a sec. If two are up, you might need to water. If one is only up, then it does need watering. And then there's the hole to be able to put water in. It has this inside that looks rather interesting. It's tapered and graduated and the plants get watered from the bottom of the reservoir are's happen to have braille on the side. And that's very curious and interesting actua

lly. This is supposed to be a poem by Robert Frost call Spring Pools, but here's a cutaway of it. And this is the water reservoir, you fill it here, the water runs down. Here's a couple of things we've learned. These are great salt watering containers, but you have to wait till the roots grow enough to be able to get down to the bottom and absorb that water. You may have to water from the top for several weeks. The other thing we learned is how important this is an overflow tube is. It's inside

of the whole thing. You can't see it from this way. When you turn it over, you can see it. That does need to be kept open, it will drain. We had a little problem with that. The pots are gorgeous. There's two here, there's a close up. This is a couple of years ago. That's a Cypress pence Tut is the name of it. These are some of the mini Vista petunias, which are just gang busters, fabulous plants. The yellow mini Vista, Yellow and mini vista midnight. But look what Tom discovered when he emptied

out that pot. The Cypress is a water hog, as he calls them, and just sucked all the water out a lot faster than some of the other containers. We learned that maybe don't put a plant that really will soak up all the water and the others might not get as much in that plant. This is what happened to us last August. This was one pot of a very pretty caliber Coa, which is new. I'll show you in a bit called Double Redstone. Well, somehow that overflow tube in the bottom got clogged. I wonder if it was

the ant colony that was running in and out of here. I don't know. They do tell you to put these things on top of a stone or a concrete block because if you put it on mulch or soil, some of that gunk can get up in the overflow. We emptied them all and we'll have to check them now. Yep. Lesson learned. You do need to keep the overflow drain clear. Okay, Onto other things That's just about the pots which are new to us. How do we do the rating? We evaluate the monthly and we put all sorts of detail

s such as the percentage of bloom coverage percent, disease percent, rather an overall rating of 151 is a miserable plant or a bunch diet. Five is, oh my God, I have to buy it next year, and that is the biddens marshmallow. I've got to find that somewhere, I have to buy it. So it was a five overall comments and reactions. That's what the company really likes, and I think that's why we've kept with it. Then the scores are averaged over all the different conditions they're planted in and over all

the months they're rated. And I make up a big Excel sheet, math is hard anyway, so you have to average all of them. They're tabulated. And summarize, medals are awarded and it's very hard to get a gold medal really hard. We had an outstanding number this year that did get them. I send the information out to the companies as soon as I can with pictures to the proven winter companies, try to share it with master gardeners and the local nursery. And I think all that information is how we've kept it

. This is an example of the annoying Excel form if you would like it. At the end of my first handout is my e mail and you can write to it, say, your cousin is having a wedding in your backyard in June. Well then you want to look for the plants that are scoring very high here or July. But we give it a numerical rating every month. Overall score for it is average the percentage of blooms. The maximum is four. If they get a four, that means they're 75 to 100% covered with blooms. And a lot of them

look at that. One really did a lot of flowers. If it's meant to be a flowering plant, this is the big thing is the awards that it was given and the overall comment, It's a helpful thing, but there's an awful lot of detail in. If you were to be an evaluator and you were to look at this, this is several years ago. What plants would catch your eye? Would it be these little guys up front that some died? Would it be these three loss of companions? Or how about the petunias or the Argyranthemum butter

fly? I think it'd probably be some of the other ones, not the front plants. We rate it differently and knock them down. If a lot died, if we planted 8 and 3 lived, it's not going to get a four or five. This is Calibrachoa suffer under different conditions. As I mentioned, we rate for bugs, these little teeny flea beetles that were out of Cliome a number of years ago. We also will comment if the rabbits have been in there destroying things or the moles, silver, and bronze medals are awarded. This

is in the handout, the numbers. You don't have to know what the numbers are, but you do need to know. It's really hard to get a goal. Silver medal is excellent, A bronze is very good. This is an AI generated thing. The guy has a really skinny arm, but otherwise it's pretty nice. We also get bonus points and maybe round up the numbers a little bit more. If they are September showstopper, they get extra credit if they last at all season. This is Putunia Supertunia Mini Vista, Pink Star. And there

it is in September, hanging in there, looking great. And that is a fabulous thing. You get more excitement over the whole season instead of just something that blooms only a little bit. But what about a plant like this? This was a nice one last year, Calibrachoa, super bells, double amber. It was just gorgeous with these little rosettes and multicolor hues. It was not a medal winner. It was average. An average plant, if given the right conditions, can still be a very good plant. So what do we a

s gardeners want? Well, of course if it's a blooming plant we want, we will want it non stop under all conditions, not need any care plant and walk away and be stunning. But some are just foliage plants, some are better, maybe early season. We've had a lot of those. Nanesia last year and osteospermam, they are better for cool seasons. It was not cool in July, Illinois was hotter than South Florida anyway. And some do need care deadheading and fertilizing. Now these are annual, they're often annu

als. They're often bloom powerhouses, and they may need more fertilizers, they get exhausted. Otherwise, not all plants are pretty all the time. If it's ugly, it's not always their fault. It may not have the right condition. A shade plant may be put in full sun, the greenhouse, or even in the ground may be too wet. This poor baby, these are all AI generated ones. I really love that one. Then I told it to make a giant plant, overcoming a small one, and it did a good job. This could be supertunia

and vista bubblegum for all I know. If you plant with low vigor, right next to say a sweet potato. A sweet potato can easily eat it. And it's not this little baby plants at all. The time where they're planted makes a difference, particularly with Calibrachoa They do not like being planted in the ground. Our soil and our rain can be alkaline, they hate that they get more disease. They turn yellow and they look very puny like that, whereas in a pot they can be pretty happy and very pretty Plants

have different seasonal growth parts. On the left is just a generic petunia at the end of the season, making zigzags with a little proof at the end. It probably could have used in fertilizer two. But this was a hybrid One. Tunia, Super tunia, Picasso in blue. It may indeed need regular fertilizer because it can look a little sad in the ground. Perhaps the mulch wasn't aged. I don't know. Maybe it was stealing a little nitrogen. Verbena as a whole. Take a vacation in July and August, the end of t

he summer with the hot months. This was at Hartley Gardens a number of years ago. It does help in some trial things. We plan them in and around and the company likes that. But it also has a lot of benefit to plant swaths of them right next to each other. I probably wouldn't buy these three if I wanted blooms in August because they're not, I'm not sure what that one is. This is a purple Verbena. It looks like it's doing better, but a lot of verbena will do that. I'm always excited if we find a ve

rbena that's looking great at the end of July through August. Here were the best ones over the years. And I'm going to add, you'll see it, the one we tried last year, pink cashmere, this is all in your handout. You can look at those later. The EnduraScape, I'm going to be showing Michigan State trials, and they had a bunch of the verbena altogether. There's Endurascape, a new and approved purple one that looks good to me last year, growers have made things so much better with magic. This is the

proven winners all time highest selling annual vista bubblegum The vista petunias are really vigorous here it is, overflowing hookra on the north border. I believe this is Vista Silverberry several years ago. It looks gorgeous. You can see it from two blocks away. I wish more plants had a bigger rate, From 1-4 A few of them do, but I can't find it for all of them. This is a vigor of zero. And this is Jobe Banobo, a well known beefy circus guy. Wrestler from a long time ago is not copyrighted, so

I can get away with showing it. Why is it important to know the vigor of a plant? Because it helps in combining plants in the container and thinking which ones might be best if you wanted to cover a big area. If you had a pretty little plant that had maybe a vigor of one or two, don't expect it to grow over a large area like a sweet potato would do or like the Vista Petunias. The vistas are four. The mini vistas which I think are dynamite, vigor of three another all time winter is Snow Princess

Lobularia Snow princess. It has a vigor of 41. Plant will get 36 " wide. They made another one white night, It's not as vigorous, but it was a very good plant and maybe might be better in containers, so it didn't swamp its neighbors. On to the photos. This is the part I hope you've been waiting for. I hope you're not asleep. Maybe everybody doesn't want to see you plant photos. Yes, they do. So the gold medal winners this year were 13 of them. The top ones, there were an amazing nine that had p

erfect scores all season. That is unusual. That is more than any other year that I've trialed to have nine, get a five every month, they really hit it out of the park. Here's the first one, Biden's Campfire marshmallow, that's new, and in the handout it has dimensions of it. It just made this big, giant, fat, tidy ball. And I loved it. That's why I really, really need it this year. Another one that I was really smitten with, other people were too, was well, it doesn't have the name up here. For

me it's hidden. Anyway it is. Petunia. Supertunia and Vivid Orchid and in June, it made this big heart shaped area. It then moved out of its area. It went everywhere and it was a great petunia. The coloring of that is spectacular. That's another must have in my opinion, and I really, really like it. It's a regular, super, not a mini vista or a vista, but it was outstanding. The Petunia Mini Vista, sweet Sangria I really fell in love with and so did others. Tom Ward, one of our co chairs said I l

ike it better than Vista. Jazberry, here it is, on one plant in the container area. This is a pink Calibrachoa, that is the mini Vista. Sweet Sangria. Wouldn't you rather buy one of those than one of those, at least if you're going to plant them in the soil. This here is Vista, Jazzberry, the flowers are a little bit bigger. It's a much larger plant in width, but the sweet sangria is just about as prolific in a bloomer. The sad part was, I got to notice the end of September that it will not be r

eleased until 2025, I guess with the culturing of it, they noticed some inconsistencies and I don't know anything else, but I'm very sad about that and I want it next year. Here is nine of the sweet Sangria. Here are 12 of Mini Vista Hot pink. Hot pink has been up for a number of years. It's a gold medal winner all the time. This had fewer there. But look how great they were. This is not a new plant, but it's the mini Vista hot pink. These are new plants. I'll have slides on that in a bit. This

is Verbena, super Verbena, and cherry burst improved. And it's got a little bit different coloring than the older version of it were the hot pink was gold medal winner. I'm still going over the perfect score ones. Petunia Minis, Scarlet has been out for a while, but it won a gold medal also, and so did Mini Vista Yellow. Now I'm going to change gears for just a little bit. Here is the charred aureole. When we got the plants last year, almost all of them were rounding moundy and short. There wer

en't very many that were tall. We had some climbing sweet potatoes. But I decided I'd put some edibles in the garden because I'd seen it in other gardens and I thought, oh, this would be a great idea to put a bold colorful leaf of Swiss charred oriole in there. I grew them at home. I grew them at the for the idea garden. We put them in. I gave one of the ones I grew at home, they were really, really puny and they looked like they'd all died. So we planted a lot. And the ones I grew, I gave to my

friend, she put them in a giant container and it looked great. And then I got later on, a text from Tom Ward saying this is what a weekly harvest of the Swiss chart was. I know when I was there in June, I picked a heaping wheelbarrow and a half of the Swiss chard. A, we planted too much D, we should have planned much, much fewer. And I'm not doing it again this year. I don't get in trouble with. The other thing I put in the gardens with a big bold texture was kale red bor. Yeah, it gets some bu

gs later on and some of the lower leaves get yellow. But it really I think helped the design of this area. All these are putinias, roundy monty, they're all about the same. The salvia was just sitting there, but the ruffled texture of the kale was great, my opinion later on when the leaves were yellow, Tom took them off. And I actually thought this was good because it turned it into a kale forest. I wish children's would grow a kale forest sometimes I was entertained by that. Okay, back to more

perfect score plants back on track. This is a picture over an east border Mini Vista Indigo. This is such a great plant. It has these tie dye blue colors. It's spectacular. Mini vista violet star is also spectacular. Perfect, all season. And of course, here's the Petunia Vista Jazz. Bright takes up a lot of space. It has certainly got a bigger four. Those were perfect score all season. Other gold medal winners. Now these are not perfect score, but they were gold medal winners. And wonderful was

this new sweet potato, sweet Caroline sweetheart Mahogany. And that's a lot to type out all of the time, but it took up a space, hang over a wall. It looks incredible. And it's got a very pretty colors, a little a line in here. And then the leaves change copper, and finally to burgundy, it was an excellent plant. Petunia Mini Vista Ultramarine. That's a brand new one. It's not as dark as midnight, but it looks great with the Petunia Mivisa violet star. It has a lot of resemblance to a smaller, m

ore prolific royal velvet. This is royal velvet. Here I see the little yellow dots in a little bit better when you see them from a distance that is mini vista ultramarine. And it was a delightful little plant and blooms a bit more than royal velvet. This is an older one, it's been out many this to midnight. It's a very dark plant in my mind. You really need to combine it with other plants such as the scarlet or the yellow, because otherwise you tend to lose it. It becomes a dark hole. The white

shows, the violet star shows. But this recedes, the color is so intensely dark, It's nice and velvety. But you have to be a little careful how you combine that. Okay, now if you can still hold with me, there are eight silver medal winners. One that's new was Calibrachoa smitten pink, double smitten pink. These beautiful several color of pink rosettes. It looked great with the new verbena pink cashmere. And I've heard that there may be limited supplies. The people, excuse me, in the nurseries, we

're trying to get more of it. But it has a limited supply this year. But it certainly is a keeper and a lovely little plant. However, we tend to have problems with Caliber Co even if they're in containers by late August. This is the 30th, right here was the double smitten pink. It stopped looping. This is magic pink lemonade and I'll tell you what these are later on. That one we killed because the pot wasn't draining. I'm going to blame the ants. They were swarming in there. The Calico double sm

itten pink. This was August 21 at Michigan State. Still the same beautiful flower. It's doing quite well in their pots. Michigan plants, things about four weeks later than we do. They have a shorter season, and I do not believe it gets as hot. They do have hot days, perhaps that's the difference, I don't know. But maybe where you're planting, it makes an effect of how it does all season. This is a new petunia for 2024, Saffron finch yellow petunias are harder to grow for the breeders. This one w

as great. A bit of a darker eye, a roughly white tinted border. It's in here with lantana, Pina colada, lobularial snow princess, and that Bidens marshmallow here it is in the ground in front now it's a regular super petunia, so it has a more open, loose character here. This is mini Vista Scarlet. It's a little bit more open and loose than the mini vistas are Another new one was Super Tunia, Bermuda Beach. And it has a coral peak look as opposed to other petunias. It has bigger blooms. They're k

inda floppy. But it's pretty when it flutters in the wind because of the white back of it. And you'll see the height and width in the handout. This is at Michigan State in middle of July. They've only had this plant in for a month. It's a pretty plant, but not taking up a lot of ground like a lot of the super tunas do. The vista and mini vista do. I'm sorry for that. Here's what I mentioned before. A verbena and super verbena, pink cashmere spectacular. There's three hues of color in it. And we

noted that the blooms are bigger than other ones. It really is a standout. Now Verbana's do like to slow down. Later on, this was Michigan State and here it helps because they've got them all in a row. This is the new not by proven winners. It's Endurascape, I believe it's Endurascape purple. But you can see from a distance, this is one we tried. I've got another photo too verbena sparkling amethyst. The cherry burst of fizzled out in the front. Some of it's around, but in the back is the pink c

ashmere bigger, more robust plant. And then I have a miserable picture of it at the end of August. I didn't get a close up of this. It's still blooming but not a whole lot. I'm going to just jump ship a little bit. This came back from a year ago. It was an annual, it wasn't a trial heliotropum. It is on your list. Augusta Lavender. I've killed so many heliotropes. I didn't kill this one when I bought it last year. The deer don't eat it. The rabbits don't eat it. It's fragrant and that's on your

best of the best handout Heliotropium, Agusta lavender. And I don't know why it came back, but I thought it was great. It is a very nice plant and it likes being in the landscape as opposed to many of the other heliotropes. They're kind of fragile. All right, so back to task again. The verbena's we trial, we trial the sparkling amethyst, which is a pretty good verbena. It's been out a while. The cherry burst was new, and this is fading by August 21. But look at the pink champagne, or excuse me,

pink cashmere. It's still going along quite well. That's in Michigan, so it's a little cooler. This is continuing the silver award winners. The Calibrachoa Magic pink lemonade I showed you on the first picture where the bum will be stuffed in it. That does very well. It's a gorgeous kaleidoscope of colors. It's been out before, but it was a medal winner this year. It can slow down by the end of August too. Michigan, I don't know how they did it, but they had a pretty good looking hot at the end

or middle of August. I guess we've also tried this one before two. It's a climbing sweet potato. Get up about three feet tall and there's two kinds, black coffee and key lime. Evidently they like to talk about food and name things after the food. I think the best use of it is on a short thrills. The black coffee seems to grow and climb a little bit better, maybe a little bit stronger this year, when we tried it out, we do know that sweet potatoes can do quite well in the shade, and we always nee

d something to plant in the shade. On the north side, I got these cheap plastic spheres and we wrapped it around them. And they made me laugh because I thought they look like cousin. I was tempted to bring some sunglasses in the top hat, but I did not. As I mentioned before to verbena sparkling amethyst a really gorgeous plant close. It can slow down toward the late summer. Here it is in one area, but excuse me, I'm going to get a drink. But thank goodness the gazebo planted it at the end of Aug

ust. The sparkling amethyst Verbana looked great there, it was at Michigan State pretty good. A little loss of some in the front. But overall, the color looks nice. The last category of metals is the bronze medal Calibrachoa double Redstone. This was absolutely spectacular coloring. I told you, we kill it and I'm blaming the ants Now for sure it's the ants. This is the gazebo container. And I'm very happy they took some because it was so pretty there. The double vintage coral is a new Calibracho

a too and this was a favorite when we look at it up close, has a little dew on it. It almost has a stained glass appearance to the veining. This was in end of July and this was August 30 in a pot. It slowed down by the end of August. But my goodness, that's an awful pretty plant, early season. Another sweet potato we had red hawk was a bronze medal winner. A vigorous plant just carving right around the coleus, the verbena cherry burst that I mentioned. It was a bronze medal winner when we first

started to see bloom, it was confusing. The old cherry burst had this pinwheel shape, but there were these pink ones in there and it confused us. I thought, well, did they mislabel it? And this is really pink cashmere? No, this is what the new version does and I've already gone over that, get the point about which Verbana we really like pink cashmere. Okay. This is an AI generated slide here. It's honorable mention, but AI, as I mentioned, cannot spell. I'm not going to even pronounce it no, but

it's my color thing. These are honorable mention. No, I didn't win any awards. But the mini vista white is a really nice plant. The blooms are slightly bigger than some of the other mini vistas. It's a crisp white color. You don't see much of the dead blooms and 100% of our evaluators would buy it. Here it is Mini Vista White, the pink star and the hot pink way over here. Jazzberry with slightly bigger blooms here. It's nice to see all the mini vista petunias lined up. You can get a judgment as

to which one you would like best. Hot pink, midnight pink, star scarlet. The white looks good there and the yellow. I think the yellow and the hot pink are the two that are the most vigorous I see. But again, it's nice in some trial areas to see them lined up together. Here's another AI generated that you tried to war. Yeah, ai tried, but they did not get it right on spelling. The other thing the AI images will do is when you ask for it to make people, they may have seven fingers, which was ent

ertaining also. But I'm sure it is a learning model. It will learn. But these are the tried award plants, we've tried James Britannia, which is also called South African flocks, a couple of times, I think they've got to be in a pot, they just don't do well on the ground. We did put one on a pot but with more vigorous plants which ate them. Last year. The new one is Safari Dusk. This was the one that's already been out and it was called Safari Sky. A little bit lighter. I like the colorations and

the clarity of dust. I would grow that again, but I would definitely grow it in a pot, in the ground. It just wasn't very happy. It had only a very few blooms that was disappointing because it can be a drought tolerant plant, but it super hates being moist all the time. We lost a half of them within a week of getting them in. They came in sad looking last year, and we lost half of both kinds. They limped along, they finally made it out, but they did not try. However, in Michigan state, this is

the dusk and this is the safari sky. They both look pretty good. I think the real point of this is to do a monoculture in a pot, and they would probably do much better, cannot tolerate to be too moist. The another one, Nemesia sunsatia coconut. Here's this poor little plant that's meant for cooler seasons, the fall or the spring. In June it's at Coconut color. Then by July it's all fizzling out and I felt sad for it. This is a great plant, but you need to know where to put it. There's two kinds

of Begonias that are new out this year. Double delight. Apple blossom with more lighter pink and a plush rose. Look how big that is. This is Bill holding that, it's a huge pendulous bloom. It would look great in a hanging basket or in a container. This is the rose, this is in the shade, the apple blossom. And they really are pretty. I would try them again myself, but only in a pot. And definitely not in the sun. Here they were, we put them up front because it said part sun or sun. And I thought,

hey, let's see how they do in sun and let's see how they do in shade. Well, the secret is shade. They look miserable all year. I would not believe this part Sun, sun for this poor babies, Michigan State had the pendulous bloom. Yep. They put in the container and they looked quite good. Apple blossom on the left, blush rose on the right. What else? These are new plants, didn't win any awards, but at least you get to see them. This is Super Bell's blue for 2024. They've had this plant out for a n

umber of years. They've increased the vigor of it and the color is quite nice. There's its cousin, Super Bell's Pink, 2024. Same thing. It's an older plant, but they re hybridized It made it better. Unfortunately, August 30, here is nice foliage for the blue foliage for not many blooms. This is the prism magic pink lemonade and that was double twilight. They're not overly happy with extreme heat at the end of August. The other one that didn't do well for us was Torenia had a leg of pink. It was

planted in the shade in two different locations, but it came in and it was always rather yellowed. No matter what we did with fertilizer, it is a new one, but I probably wouldn't buy it myself. Here it is. July as MSU. Okay. Well, it's yellowed and it wasn't too vigorous there either other new plants. Now, we're just looking at the pictures. They came out with a new scaevola in the whirlwind series. Scabola White. Right here. We are supposedly getting some more scabola that are new this year. Ot

her new plants, not award winners. This is Coleus color Blaze Cherry drop. I thought it was curious. It seems to have a reversion there, whereas these have the bright cherry in the. Here is another area of it. And maybe that's the little reversion area. But they tend to have these bright pink centers. And it's a cute little plant. It's not a tall or upright coleus, it tends to be more trailing. This is the cherry drop, and this is the older plant chocolate drop that's been on for a number of yea

rs too. Other new plants. Here's the Coleus cherry drop. Thank goodness the Gazebo grew. And here it is in a pot with a lot more intense Burgundy, deeper color in Michigan state. Should I get another plant this spring also? Yes, in purple. From our trials team to you. I am so grateful to all the volunteers that helped in trials last year, particularly to this group of people, because they all evaluated things and the trials team did to. Addie helped in the greenhouse, and Tom and Bill did a wond

erful job. The motto is collect them all. There they are. This is my family. After listening to a plant talk, I'm the plant. Tal two last slides and I'll be done and I'll try to see if I can do the chat. I asked AI to generate a picture of the idea garden and it gave me a couple links to our pictures. But when it generated a picture, these are two of them. It told me, it's just like talking to hell in that old movie. The big giant computer, I've crafted an image of the master gardeners beautiful

garden in Urbana, Illinois showcasing the vibrant flora and meticulous care that goes into maintaining such a lovely space. I hope it brings the serene beauty of the garden to life for you. Well, that's quite a bunch of chat from an AI thing, but I did like it. It got stuck on light bulbs. I think it took that word idea and it made all of these with English shrubs around it. And these are supposedly the University of Illinois buildings with more light vaults. But I was entertained by the lovely

words that it said it, and then I asked it to create a gardener jumping for joy. And here it is. I thank all of the volunteers for helping out with this program. Please keep the ideas coming and the joy in gardening for all. That's it. Okay. What I got for chats? I'm not sure where we're going anyway. How about the Chicago Botanic Test Guards? Yes, they're excellent. I've been there. I have Penn State usually I put two articles on the Penn State and other ones, they are all great to go look. An

ytime you see a test garden, please go visit it because it's worthwhile seeing it. Someone that's not a master gardener or volunteer. I would probably refer that along. I don't think so. I'm not sure. But I would ask the extension like Valerie or Lucy Cross about that one slide behind the cont I don't know. I can't chard. Yes. Yes. I can't mention chard to Tom anymore. But it was so beautiful, does it Only trial annuals, We did used to trial perennials. We had a number of people years ago and th

ree years ago they gave us, coreopsis candle light, we're still trialing that. We had to promise to keep it in the very same area for three years. And the mice or wolfs or something decided they should eat some of it. It's getting hard to follow. But this will be our last year of trialing and giving them information. And Rosalie Fisher says that she likes the Jazzberry. Is that all? Okay, Jenny or anybody, are you here? I am, I just wanted to say thank you so much for all that you have done. Yo

u always put on a wonderful program. It gets excited for Spring. Thank you.