LOXLEY, AL — Plant Development Services, Inc. (PDSI) and Southern Living® are excited to announce new additions to the Southern Living™ Plant Collection for fall 2009.
The Southern Living™ Plant Collection, first introduced in spring 2008, provides consumers with innovative new plants designed to solve specific landscape challenges. Each plant in the collection is the result of years of plant evaluations, plant trials, and consumer research. The Collection is available through retail garden centers across the Southern United States.
Fall 2009 introductions will include new shrubs, bulbs, and annuals.
Shrubs: Yewtopia™ Plum Yew
Jubilation™ Gardenia
Mountain Snow™ Pieris
Rosalinda™ Indian Hawthorne
Queen Mum™ Agapanthus
Bulbs: White Crinum Lily
Pink Rain Lily
Annuals: Bonita Shea™ Begonia
‘Cajun Blue’ Scaevola
‘Blue Sue’ Setcreacea
Plum Mist™ Cuphea
Azure Skies™ Heliotrope
The new shrubs add texture and color to the shrub category. The six new releases provide improved characteristics ranging from increased heat tolerance to multi-season blooms.
The new lilies from the Southern Bulb Company — colorful, prolific, and carefree — join three bulb varieties introduced this fall: Narcissus tazetta ‘Grand Primo,’ Narcissus tazetta ‘Golden Dawn’ and Leucojum aestivum Snowflakes.
Bulbs discovered by the Southern Bulb Co. grew in Southern soils generations ago, are uniquely suited for warm climates, and require virtually no maintenance.
The six new annuals in the Southern Living™ Plant Collection for spring 2009 are from the Athens Select™ plant collection and were selected to be heat and humidity tolerant by Dr. Allan Armitage in his trials at the University of Georgia. Dr. Armitage, a well-known plant researcher, helped found Athens Select™ in 1998, to introduce superior heat and humidity tolerant plants to market.
Begonia Bonita Shea™ is compact and mound-shaped with dainty white to pink flowers borne over curled reddish green leaves with red undersides. With vivid red flowers and a low growth habit, Ruellia Rajin’ Cajun™ is a tough little plant that’s easy to grow and holds up well through heat and humidity. Scaevola ‘Cajun Blue’ PP#16312 is more compact and earlier blooming than other varieties.
Setcreacea ‘Blue Sue’ displays distinctive blue-tinged foliage with a handsome purple margin and pink flowers. Cuphea Plum Mist™, an exceptionally free-flowering, low growing plant, offers two-tone flowers in light and dark lavender. Incredibly heat tolerant, Heliotrope Azure Skies™ is a low growing, spreading American native with light lavender flower clusters.
For more information about any of the exciting new releases from the Southern Living™ Plant Collection, or to request sample plants, please visit www.southernlivingplants.com.
Plant Development Services, Inc. a leader in horticultural innovation, was founded in 1996 by Greg Smith, after he recognized a need for an industry resource that could manage new plant introductions. Of particular interest to Plant Development Services Inc. are plants with unique performance attributes that can be patented, branded, and successfully introduced to the consumer market. Plant Development Services, Inc. owns and/or licenses more than 50 patented plant properties, including the number one azalea brand in the world, Encore Azalea®. Growers interested in the program and plant breeders with potential new cultivars should contact Plant Development Services Inc.
Southern Living® is a premier lifestyle and entertaining magazine of the South and the 8th largest monthly consumer magazine in the U.S. (based on readership). It reaches nearly 16 million readers each month and enjoys a circulation of about 2.8 million. Published 12 times a year Southern Living® celebrates the heart of Southern life.
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Thursday February 12, 2009