New Plants! | Egan Gardens of Salem, Oregon

New Plants for 2009

We couldn't start a new spring without plans for trying new plants. Life would be too easy without the stimulating frustration of figuring out how to grow a bunch of unknowns. There are lots new varieties of things we've been growing all along, like trailing verbenas and geraniums, and assorted perennials, but I'll list just a few things I'm really excited about.

Coleus 'Sedona' Not new, but newly returned after disappearing for 2 years, Sedona is the brightest, richest orange-bronze colored Coleus there is. It's big enough to be the center of a large mixed shade/sun planter, or to make a big glow of orange all summer in the shade between your perennials and shrubs. So glad to have it back. It will be ready in May and June.

Euphorbia 'Diamond Frost' Some of you got to try this last year, but we didn't grow enough of it for everyone - because everyone should try it. OK, it's fluffy and white, big deal. It's a really pretty fluffy white, though, and it goes on being that way month after month, perfectly mounded in shape, never needing cleaning, never stopping blooming, adapting to all sorts of sun, water and temperature levels. It will be ready in April

Oenothera 'Lemon Drop' Pronounced "eeno-thera". This yellow-flowered perennial is one of those with great container potential. It handles drying out (yes, most of us let our containers go too dry sometimes, don't we), it blooms continuously, and it has a nice mounding, semi- trailing shape that flows over the side of a pot nicely.

Dahlia 'Karma' varieties These are tall, large-flowered dahlias that were bred for the florist market, but they are wonderful as a garden plant. They produce masses of flowers all summer and fall, in bright red, yellow, and pink, also two-tone blends and red-white bicolor. Their winter-hardiness is yet to be determined, but even if they prove not to be truly perennial, they give so many flowers that they're still worth planting annually.

Petunia 'Supertunia Vista Bubblegum' Not new to us this year, but I'm still trying to figure out how big it can get. If you've seen the baskets we plant for the Salem main post office on 25th St. those huge balls of pure pink are Vista Bubblegum. They start out like any other trailing type petunia, but they just keep growing, blooming, blooming, growing. You could make a nice big basket out of one plant, and it'd look good until Halloween, at least.

Green Indoors

More requests for interior plants have been coming our way the last couple of years. I hope it's because you all have been learning how much interior plants do to purify the air in our homes, add healthy oxygen to it, and send out mysterious spirit-lifting vibes to us. That hippie stuff of the 1970s houseplant fad was "right on", actually. Rather than continue with my uncertain attempts to find other sources to send you to, I've decided to start carrying a selection of indoor foliage ourselves. Call me a control freak, a perfectionist, whatever, but I know I can make sure I have nothing but the best, cleanest, and healthiest houseplants. I can never know for sure about plants elsewhere. Along with the "patio plants", like Mandevillas and Dipladenias, which we've been growing for years, these can go outside in the summer if you prefer not to have them indoors all year, or if you like the Jungle Patio look.