ILLINOIS YARD AND GARDEN

All America Selections
- the garden survivors

Sometimes you have to feel sorry for certain people. Postal carriers are one group. The holiday bills and garden catalogs of January follow December's cards and packages.

Each year, the garden catalog scribes come up with fancier descriptions and more brilliant photos to tempt us into parting ways with our money. In most cases, after the grayness and chilling of the winter, we eagerly scribble out one check after another.

Companies try to outdo each other, creating the perfectly scented rose or the juiciest peach. Plants are dwarfed or elongated. New colors come and go. Disease and insect resistant plants are touted.

This all leads to the All America Selections (AAS), which is an honor bestowed on certain plants that have performed, on the whole, outstanding throughout the nation. The plant doesn't have to be perfect everywhere, just in the vast majority of locations from California to Florida to Massachusetts to Minnesota.

There are a couple evaluation gardens in Illinois that are already working on winners for the next couple of years. You see, the winners for 2004 were chosen in 2002.

About 20 some years ago, when I had more chutzpah, I contacted AAS and asked if they could send me seeds of the winners the year before so I could try them in my own garden. To my surprise they did. And they have kept sending them year after year.

Some of the AAS winners were losers in my garden. Some still are.

Taking a look at the AAS winners, the first one that stands out is a plumed celosia called "Fresh Look Red." It's the only gold medal winner for the year.

The flowers are a brilliant red, almost poinsettia color. The plants weren't bothered by diseases or insects all summer, and grew equally well in containers and the ground. They made a nice sunny border around some perennials.

Unfortunately, the foliage is a yellowish-green instead of a dark green, no matter how much nitrogen was added to the soil, so the plants looked a little anemic. Instead of eliciting "oohs and ahs" from my friends, the plants got nonchalant shrugs. Still, it performed admirably through summer's weather but nothing to make you shoot to the world.

Better was its sister 'Fresh Look Yellow' celosia. The flowers were a lemon yellow, but they looked much better poised on top of the same yellowish foliage of "Fresh Look Red."

My two favorites were "Gypsy Deep Rose" baby's breath and "Queeny Purple" Hollyhock.

The baby's breath is the annual type and did better in containers than the ground as it needs other plants jammed close by. The flower fortunately wasn't as pink as I feared, instead having a light purple tint to it. There wasn't another new flower that survived the heat as well. Like that little Energizer bunny, it kept on going and going all summer. There was a mass of large pinhead-size flowers from June through September.

You couldn't say that about the hollyhock. However, the royal purple color on the dwarf plants was stunning. Plants were no more than 24-inches high, and graced with double purple flowers. Fellow gardeners did comment on it. Unfortunately, like most hollyhocks, it only flowered once but for a good eight-week period.

Will the hollyhock flower over winter? Hard to say. I seriously doubt if the plants will in Illinois, but the seeds might come up next year. Unfortunately, there's no way to predict what the color will be or the size of the plant.

The new Petunia "Limbo Violet" looked good in the trial gardens, but the seeds wouldn't germinate for my expert greenhouse grower, so I can't truthfully report. It's always easier to buy petunias than try to sow the dust-like seeds.

There were three new vegetables: "Amy" Melon (a cantaloupe with good flavor), winter squash "Sunshine" and watermelon "Sweet Beauty." All did adequately, but to tell the truth, if you don't have a large vegetable garden, and you need one with any type of vine crop even the bush ones, you may want to concentrate more on the flowers.

David Robson is an Extension Educator, Horticulture, at the Springfield Extension Center, University of Illinois Extension, P.O. Box 8199, Springfield, IL 62791. Telephone: (217) 782-6515. E-mail: drobson@uiuc.edu

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