Plant Preview


Welcome to Plant Preview, a blog dedicated to helping gardeners learn about gardening techniques and preview new plant cultivars. Read about new plants here first and hear how your "comrades in compost" are making use of new plant introductions in their gardens and landscapes. Blog author Geri Laufer is a life-long dirt gardener, degreed horticulturist, author and former County Extension Agent. Plant Preview is copyrighted by Geri Laufer.

Thursday, September 23, 2010

New Plant Introductions and the First Day of Autumn


The golden Harvest Moon last night was an excellent introduction to the first day of Fall. Although it’s now officially a new season, our weather has not broken and temperatures continue in the mid-nineties, still with no rain. Faced with this sort of challenge, it’s time to revert to catalogs in air conditioning and the new plant introductions appearing in the garden magazines. Garden Debut® will be offering some beautiful new woody ornamentals in Spring 2011, and we’ll hear more about them soon.

As a preview, there is Merlot Redbud, with dark, wine-red merlot-colored leaves and a delightful parentage that enables it to beat this continuing heat and drought. Merlot is the offspring of Forest Pansy Redbud crossed with Cercis canadensis ‘Texensis’! The first parent contributes the dark leaf color, intensified in Merlot, while the second adds a thickness and drought resistance to smaller leaves, enabling this plant to withstand hot dry conditions without a ripple.

Then there is Admiration Barberry, a showstopper with a blaze of orange-red foliage with yellow margins adding plentiful color to the garden pallet. Garden Debut® says this dwarf has a broad, upright growth habit reaching only 12-15 inches tall in 4 years. And though it is a Japanese Barberry, it is non-flowering and therefore there are no worries on spreading by seed.

A host of new plants are in the lineup, all of them thoroughly tested; be sure to visit the website and the Garden Debut® Facebook page for daily news and previews.  

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