Features Crops Flowers
New Varieties – July/August 2005

New Varieties

1. CABARET™ Series  alibrachoa
The new Cabaret™ series from Ball FloraPlant will change the way you think about calibrachoa!  Offering 8 high-impact colours for 2006, the Cabaret series is well-matched for uniformity in flowering time, flower size and habit, allowing for easy bench-run shipping.  The full colour range means easy ordering for growers and retailers: Cabaret has something to please every colour palette.  Featuring dark green foliage and a well-branched, vigorous habit, Cabaret varieties are less prone to yellowing at higher pH levels, providing better greenhouse performance for growers.  These calibrachoas flower early under short days, making them ideal for early-season sales, and home gardeners will find it hard to resist the vibrant, flower-filled plants at retail.  Available in: cherry rose, red, scarlet, apricot, pink, rose, purple, and white.  These vibrant, mounding and trailing varieties will grow about 5 to 7 inches (13 to 18 cm) tall and spread 12 to 14 inches (30 to 35 cm) in the garden.

2. Clematis ‘ville de lyon’
A classic favourite now reintroduced. The deep pink sepals fade in the centre from the intense carmine edges. Produces large 12-18 cm blooms with hard pruning and produces a stunning display of colour.  Zones 3-9. Blooms June-Sept., 300 cm.
(Van Noort Bulb Co.)

3. dynasty rose lace dianthus
An eye-catching new selection with deep rose blooms and fine white edges.  Like all Dynasty varieties, Rose Lace is very well-branched, upright and strong-stemmed and demonstrates excellent landscape and garden performance.  It’s very versatile for the consumer: besides providing terrific colour and frilly flower texture in garden beds and containers, it even doubles as a great backyard cutflower. (Ball)

4. heuchera ‘color dream’
An attractive foliage plant to keep you interested all year round with its ever-changing colours.
(Darwin PlantSpotters)

5. luna hibiscus
Luna Pink Swirl displays eye-catching blooms with dark eyes and a pink picotee pattern – the flowers are darker on the edges of the petals and lighter toward the centers.  Luna White shows off white flowers with dark red eyes.  Both varieties offer the same dramatic and impressive look of the original Luna varieties, with the same great branching without pinching, excellent retail appeal and great garden performance! (Ball Seed)

6. fusion™ exotic impatients
Fusion(tm) Exotic Impatiens
There’s nothing else like them! The truly unique Fusion(tm) series of exotic impatiens from Ball FloraPlant delivers distinctive, high-voltage colours and an intriguing flower form that are sure to get attention. Fusion varieties are truly premium items for premium programs – they’re great for early sales and their vigorous habit makes them well-suited to larger, higher-margin containers. They’re easy for growers to produce, with culture very similar to Fiesta(tm) double impatiens. Offering something truly different at retail, Fusion varieties will attract shoppers with their unique look and gorgeous colours – choose from Glow (yellow), Heat (rose), Radiance (peach), Sunset (apricot) or Infrared (cherry pink). (Ball Floral Plant)

7. paeonia ‘pecher’
The large, semi-double, blush-pink flowers have flecks and subtle stripes of red on the edges, which look like they have been gently dipped like an artist’s brush. The blooms have the sweet combined smell of roses and honey, wonderful when you bring the cut flowers into your kitchen. Zones 2-9.  Blooms May-July, 60 cm.
(Van Noort Bulb Co.)

8. veronica ‘high five’
New Darwin PlantSpotters hybridizer Jan Verschoor has re-written the rules in Veronica breeding, with a plant who’s flower spikes are over twice as long as the stems they stand on! (Darwin PlantSpotters)