one of my favorite things about gardening is there's always room to
dream of next year and the possibilities that
are to come stay with me as i share with you
the new annual introductions that i'm most excited for
in 2021
hello friends welcome to gardening with creekside i am jenny and today we are
coming to you once again from our trial gardens here at creekside
nursery in dallas north carolina as you may recall
we are a proven winners certified garden center and
one of the fantastic things about having a great relationship with proven winners
is that they send us the new introductions
for next year so we are back here at the trial gardens where we have planted
all of the sun loving annuals that will be new for 2021
there have been a few that have out shown
everybody else and i am super excited about them and i cannot wait to share
all of the details with you so everything that i'm going to talk
about today in this video is from proven winners they are annuals
meaning that they will last for one season and they will be
all of these are going to be sun loving annuals
now the one that we're going to start out with first
is just because it is right here beside of me
this is coffee cups coffee cups is a fantastic
elephant ear that has this great clumping habit
very upright and it is non-invasive so if you've ever had elephant ears in the
past and they have really spread throughout your garden you don't
need to worry about that with coffee cups coffee cups is really
unique because it has these wonderful upturned leaves that when it rains it
catches the water inside the leaf and then when
it gets filled up and it's heavy enough it will
tip and empty it empty the cup and then stand back
upright it has a gorgeous olive green color to it on the leaves
and then these nice rich chocolate mocha
stems and veins in it absolutely gorgeous it will get to be about
anywhere from three to five feet tall and wide it will make a fantastic focal
point in a flower bed like we have here or
even a really large container in fact i am con highly considering
using coffee cups and those two aqua pots that are by the
pergola for next year as my main thriller for those pots
it will be we are remember in north carolina a zone 7b
so this can be i know i said these are all annuals
technically this is an annual but if you were in
zone 8 or higher meaning like a hotter climate than us
then it actually can be a perennial for you
and if you're in a zone seven or colder you could save these tubers so the
freeze is going to kill all of the foliage back if you want to
keep it as a perennial you can just mulch it well
and it will overwinter well if you are colder and you can dig them up and save
them through the winter but these are just
a fantastic low maintenance plant that is a high performer
for us this year the japanese beetles did not touch this plant
really really well it is just a gorgeous plant that i
absolutely love so coffee cups elephant ear is
definitely a one that will be put on my shopping list for next year
the next plant that i am super excited about and it's very easy to see why
is pineapple brandy coleus this plant is actually only one plant i know that
it is massive and it looks huge and you're like how many plants is that
jenny well it is actually only one this absolutely gorgeous coleus was
bred in florida so it performs fantastic in our southern hot humid climate it
absolutely thrives in our climate you can tell that
it has this bright green limey chartreuse color
to it and what's really fun about it is that it has this
burgundy edging on it so the stems have that great kind
of that reddish color the edges do and even some of the
veining does now we love this coleus not only because of its color and it's vigor
just absolutely a fantastic plant for both a large container
and in the cole in the coleus in a container and the landscape it will
do great um it is more resistant to powdery
mildew so powdery mildew you know for us in the south
is really um can be a problem especially here
late in the summer because of our high humidity pineapple brandy
doesn't miss a beat also it can go sun or shade
very very versatile we love that about the color blaze series
of coleus because it can do sun or shade anywhere in between
also pineapple brandy is going to be a very
late bloomer coleus of course is known for its foalish color
and not necessarily that it has blooms it will bloom
typically but this one is a very very late bloomer
and of course if you just snip it off then it will just bush out
and get even thicker so i already have plans for pineapple brandy i'm going to
use it in mass swatches in the landscape
because it just has that amazing color that just draws people's
eye to itself it is just fantastic so make
sure you add pineapple brandy to your list the next plant on my list
that i am absolutely positively in love with is
the macho murado this is commonly known here
in the south as a mexican petunia now if you've ever had an experience
with a mexican petunia you could either have a success story
and you love it or it could be a horror story because in the past the typical
traditional mexican petunia can be quite um ill-behaved shall we say she does
she would spread and just be kind of invasive in the garden
well proven winners has taken all those pesky characteristics
and removed them so this macho morato is very well behaved she is more dense
a tighter habit she will not run she is sterile so she stays in her where she's
supposed to where you put her in the garden
and she has bigger blooms now for us southern gardeners
this will be an absolute essential plant to add to your garden
why because it actually thrives in our hot
humid nights if you're from the south you know
especially this time of year end of august into september
our nights do not get cool it was just the other night it was 11 o'clock when
we were watching the news it was still 80 degrees and like 96
humidity and it stays that way basically all through the night
this is the type of weather that this mexican petunia
absolutely thrives in now can northern northern gardeners grow it absolutely it
will do fantastic but you may notice that you're going to
have fewer blooms on it than us southern gardeners because this
is one of those few plants in the world that actually loves hot humid nights so
it is absolutely fantastic these blooms are an absolutely gorgeous
kind of a deep lavender color nice and big pollinators
love it and are very attractive to it again it will bring some
height to your garden and bring an interest a nice focal point
to your space so make sure you add this fantastic
mexican petunia to your garden next year i know that i'm going to use her
in lots of various spaces the next plant that we're going to talk about
has been an absolute showstopper here at the nursery people
from yards away have asked what is that gorgeous plant
well that is medusa a fantastic new sweet potato vine that has this
absolutely gorgeous lime green chartreuse color very
vibrant it is quite the spreader it has great habit to it is nice and low
and grows wide this would be a fantastic plant
to put in a hanging basket it can do part sun to sun it would bring
you great foliage color brightness
to if you have a hanging spot on your porch i know here in the south a lot of
people like to use like boston ferns on their front porches but a lot of
times by the end of the summer it's just too hard to keep them well
watered and keeping them lush well medusa would be a fantastic replacement
for those hanging ferns and gives you that great color
that great hanging draping trailing effect
in a hanging basket it clearly does really well
in the landscape so if you're going to put it in the landscape i would suggest
putting it in the front of your bed because it does have a nice
low and wide habit it will bring a lot of
pop and color to an area so you could put just a thousand things behind it to
to come off of it but just that medusa is a fantastic
really unique sweet potato vine because it is really has
deep seriated leaves on it lobes on it and just would make a fantastic addition
to your part sun to sun garden one of the plants that i'm
going to add to my pollinator next year for absolutely sure is the new lantana
this is the new luscious royale red zone if you are
looking to attract butterflies pollinators to your garden
then you have got to add this lantana it is really really unique
because the new blooms will come out red and orange and as they mature
they will turn a solid red i am talking vibrant fire truck fire engine
red really neat color on it like i said the pollinators the butterflies
absolutely go nuts over this of course lantana
loves the hot hot weather it is absolutely
thriving in our heat and humidity here in the late summertime
it has a really nice mounded tight habit to it
it's not very leggy at all it's nice and tight
of course that gorgeous green foliage on it against those
red and orange blooms absolutely make it a show stopper
so if you're looking for a new lantana make sure you add
red zone to your lips because i know i'm always looking for like a true red to
add to my garden spaces well this is it it is absolutely
fantastic last but not least is perhaps it's
really maybe my favorite you know it's hard to choose it's like
saying who's your favorite child you really can't say
but this is one of my favorite new introduction plants this year
and it's not just one plant it's actually three plants because it's all
in the same series it is the double up begonia and if you're like
jenny you know it's begonia how fantastic can
a begonia be well let me just tell you how fantastic
these can be there are three colors in this double up
series there is a pink there is red and there is white these
are perhaps some of the most fantastic plants
because they are completely maintenance-free
they are self-cleaning you do not have to deadhead them
and they are absolutely gorgeous they are
really have a natural tight habit on it all of these plants that you see i have
not pinched them once they have naturally grown this way in that nice
rounded mounded habit and they are covered in
blooms and they have been since we got them as little four
inch containers these plants are just wonderful
the pink is just a true soft baby doll pink on that great green
foliage just an absolutely lovely plant next is
the red again another lovely true red
on a darker foliage so it really does stand out and finally there is white
a pure white bloom again on a bit of a darker foliage so it really
pops against the plant another thing another reason
to love these plants is that they can do sun or
shade as a little test i grew the pink and the red
in the absolute full sun clearly they have done
amazingly well the white has been in full shade
again it has done amazingly well it stayed in the shade
all day long it does get maybe a couple of hours maybe two
hours of sun at the very end of the day but remember
a shade plant gets four hours of lesser sun
so these begonias if you have that trouble spot and you just can't quite
figure out what plant to put in there but you want
flowers and you want color i would highly suggest that you use this double
up begonia again whether you want white red or pink
extremely versatile they will do great in containers great
in landscapes just extremely versatile high performing
low maintenance plants you cannot go wrong
with these three colors i hope that you have been excited and
just are already looking forward to the next 2021 growing season like i
am i know sometimes when i'm in a growing season and i'm already dreaming
about the next one i feel like i'm kind of cheating on this year's garden
but you know i think the plants can handle it hopefully you have found
plants that you are excited about inspired about already
dreaming about putting in your garden make sure that you add these plants to
your garden journal if you're already thinking about that you really love one
of these plants go ahead jot it down in your gardening
journal which one you like and think about where you want to put it
as always thank you so much for gardening with creekside you all have a
fantastic day thanks for joining us we'll see you next
time bye guys
you