A rose is a rose – or is it?
The Academy Awards go to the best movies. Olympic medals honor
top athletes. In the garden world, the best of the best carry
titles like All-America Selections or Gold Medal winners.
A rose is a rose – or is it?
The Academy Awards go to the best movies. Olympic medals honor top athletes. In the garden world, the best of the best carry titles like All-America Selections or Gold Medal winners.
An assortment of flowers and vegetables reach this lofty designation. But what does it mean to you, the gardener?
The flowers and vegetables that receive these honors are either very hardy or remarkably beautiful or tremendously tasty or extremely prolific. Sometimes all of these things. It is a marketing ploy but it also helps buyers in making better or smarter choices at the nursery, through a catalog, or online.
A good example is All-America Rose Selections. AARS is an association of rose growers who come up with new and interesting roses, field test them for two years throughout the United States to determine their worthiness, and then introduce three or four new roses that make the cut. A rose bush carrying the AARS designation on the packaging is time-honored way to choose new plantings that have the best chance to thrive and survive.
The AARS organization dates back to 1938. Others have seen the light of this marketing technique. There are All-America annuals and vegetables from All-America Selections, All-American Daylilies, the Perennial Plant Association and a number of flower special interests such as the American Daffodil Society.
Among the choices:
– The 2007 All-America Rose Selections winners are “Rainbow Knockout,” a landscape shrub with flowers that are deep color pink with yellow center; “Strike It Rich,” a grandiflora with deep golden yellow flowers touched with ruby red; and “Moondance,” a floibunda with pure white flowers. You will find AARS’s 2007 roses as bareroot shrubs ready for planting in January. For a look at the flowers, sign onto www.rose.org.
– The new 2007 All-American Daylily is called “Lavender Vista” for its fragrant-lavender blooms. The All-American Daylily Selections Council chooses one top-performing, disease resistant daylily each year for honors. For more information and buyer information, check www.allamericandaylilies.com or call (816) 224-2852.
– All-America Sections rates flowers and vegetables. You will spot the AAS logo on top-performing seeds in catalogs, and started plants at the nursery. The 2007 winners are a celosia named “Fresh Look Gold;” a petunia called “Opera Supreme Pink Morn;” a vinca named “Pacific Burgundy Halo” and just one vegetable, a hot pepper called “Holy Mole.” Seeds and plants will be available in the spring.
– The Perennial Plant Association has chosen Nepeta faassenii “Walker’s Low” as its 2007 Perenial Plant of the Year. “Walker’s Low” is a low-growing, blue-flowering member of the mint family and will be widely available in the spring. It seeds itself and, like most mints, can become invasive. You can check it out at www.perennialplant.org.
– National Gold Medal winner for the American Daffodil Society is “Ohura’s Mayor,” a yellow daffodil with a red trumpet. For information on the Northern California Daffodil Society, contact Jan Meyers, 102 Picnic Ave., San Rafael,
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