Look out, Windy City! Our very own Dan Heims will be blowin’ your way in just two-and-a-half weeks.

Dan will be speaking at this year’s Chicago Flower Show and will speak on two separate occasions on Saturday, March 10, and Sunday, March 11.

Beginning at 11:00 a.m. on March 10, in Room A, Dan will speak on “Garden Gems.” He will discuss the latest and most exciting perennials, tropicals and woodies in today’s market.

Known for traveling the world to gain insights about international plant trends and new introductions, Dan will reveal several of his top plant secrets to gardening enthusiasts.

Additionally, Chicago Flower Show attendees will not want to miss Dan’s second speaking event at 12:15 p.m. on March 11, in Room A. He will share some great container combination ideas as well as tips for creating beautiful gardens in limited spaces during his “Container Crazy and Small Space Gardening” talk.

This year, the Chicago Flower Show’s theme is ‘Hort Couture’, with a focus on original flower and garden designs as well as drawing inspiration from different plant textures, colors and fabrics. With a newly redesigned show floor, the 2012 Chicago Flower Show is sure to be one of the best yet. To learn more, visit www.chicagoflower.com.

For more information about Dan Heims and Terra Nova Nurseries, click here.

Growers, our newest Sneak Peek, Penstemon ‘Watermelon Taffy’, is making its grand debut. The latest addition to the Taffy™ Series, ‘Watermelon Taffy’ produces stunning watermelon-pink blooms with a white eye. Vigorous and showy, these great bloomers provide flowers for up to 20 weeks. ‘Watermelon Taffy’ has a strong, upright habit and short stems. Additionally, this yummy new variety is loved by hummingbirds and butterflies. ‘Watermelon Taffy’ is low-maintenance, deer-resistant as well as heat and humidity-tolerant. The average size includes 18” Width / 18” Height / 28” Flower Height and it performs well in zones 7 – 9. This sweet variety is perfect for mixed beds, sun gardens, cottage gardens and banks. To view the full plant profile and Grower Recipe for Pensetmon ‘Watermelon Taffy’, click here.  Also, watch our YouTube video to learn more about the other varieties in our Taffy™ Series by clicking here.

Terra Nova Nurseries breeds a wide variety of plants in addition to penstemon, for example, our Tradescantia Charm™ Series. This series includes ‘Luck Charm’, ‘Sunshine Charm’, ‘Angelic Charm’, and ‘Regal Charm’, all of which are a new and improved version of ‘Blue and Gold’. These tradescantia varieties were bred for golden-yellow foliage with compact habits. Most notable, the flower color palette has been expanded to pink, white and purple. Growers, the Tradescantia Charm™ Series and Penstemon ‘Watermelon Taffy’ are available for immediate shipping. Contact one of our sales representatives at sales@terranovanurseries.com and place your order today. To learn more about our current liner availabilities, click here.

 

The breeding team at Terra Nova has done it again! Heuchera ‘Rio’, our newest Sneak Peek, is the latest addition to the Heuchera City™ Series. This multicolored plant is named for the vibrant city of Rio de Janeiro. With H. americana, H. micrantha, and H. villosa breeding, ‘Rio’ can be enjoyed throughout all four seasons. This stunning new heuchera produces beautiful, short maroon flower spikes with white flowers that bloom in the summer. Its foliage color is ever-changing from peach-amber, to amber, then to tan, and finally to yellow-amber.  ‘Rio’ is a large and vigorous plant that makes a great garden performer and container star. Its average size includes 14” W / 9” H / 14” Flower Ht, and it grows well in zones 4 – 9. To learn more about this amazing new heuchera, click here to visit the plant’s full profile. Also, check out the Grower Recipe below.

In addition to our extensive heuchera collection, we offer our grower customers a large selection of other genera, including geum varieties. Geum ‘Eos’ has bright-orange flowers with golden-yellow foliage. The plant’s compact habit makes it perfect for sunny containers. Geum ‘Fireball’ has large, profuse, orange-yellow, semi-double flowers. This beauty blooms from spring until fall. Geum ‘Fire Storm’ is our newest variety, and is an improved version of ‘Fireball’. It has twice the flower-power with half the plant size. This vigorous, compact and long-blooming plant is easy to grow in almost any garden.

Growers, to learn more about our current liner availability listings, click here. Also, to place an order for Heuchera ‘Rio’, or our geum varieties, contact one of our sales representatives at sales@terranovanurseries.com.

Our Kniphofia Popsicle™ Series are among some of the most vibrant and unique plants we offer our grower customers. With a delicious array of colors, combined with improved characteristics, this series is quickly becoming a favorite. The Popsicle™ Series feature a compact habit, long bloom times, attractive grassy foliage and high-impact colors. Continue reading below to learn more about the different varieties included in the series.

Kniphofia ‘Creamsicle’

This new dwarf kniphofia has multiple spikes of flowers that are creamsicle orange. ‘Creamsicle’ was specifically bred for smaller spaces and long bloom time. This beauty is ideal for mixed beds or as an upright accent.

Kniphofia ‘Mango Popsicle’

‘Mango Popsicle’ has delicious spikes of sweet, mango-orange that bloom continuously from summer into fall. The short grassy foliage looks neat all summer. ‘Mango Popsicle’ is a terrific drought-tolerant garden plant.

Kniphofia ‘Papaya Popsicle’

‘Papaya Popsicle’ is an all-summer bloomer with a very short, compact habit. This prolific bloomer has spikes of flowers the color of ripe papayas. With charming, grass-like foliage, ‘Papaya Popsicle’ is great for small gardens or in a container.

Kniphofia ‘Pineapple Popsicle’

‘Pineapple Popsicle’ has compact, grassy foliage and produces massive numbers of re-blooming cream to yellow spikes. This dynamic plant grows and flowers very quickly. ‘Pineapple Popsicle’ is deer-resistant and attracts hummingbirds throughout the summer and fall.

Kniphofia ‘Redhot Popsicle’

‘Redhot Popsicle’ has lively, cinnamon-red flowers on short, compact plants. With narrow, grassy leaves and a fast-growing time, this variety is ideal for mixed beds and small gardens. ‘Redhot Popsicle’ is free blooming and re-blooming.

Kniphofia ‘Orange Vanilla Popsicle’

‘Orange Vanilla Popsicle’ is the newest addition to our Popsicle™ Series, and is only available to growers at this time. This variety is a two-toned beauty topped with flower spikes of red-orange over a creamy-white bottom. ‘Orange Vanilla Popsicle’ has the same re-blooming, short grassy leaves and compact habit of the other varieties in the series. Hummingbirds love this plant!

Our newest Sneak Peek, Coreopsis ‘Summer Punch’, part of the Punch™ Series, is already making waves among our grower customers. ‘Summer Punch’ features large, bi-colored flowers of deep-crimson and lemon-gold at the beginning of summer, and then change color as they age to deep ox-blood and burnished-bronze. This new coreopsis variety is a handsome, dramatic annual with a low spreading habit. ‘Summer Punch’ grows well in zones 8 – 10 and prefers full sun. The average size includes 14” W / 9” H / 10” Flower Ht. For additional information, click here to see the full plant profile, as well as view the Grower Recipe below.

Growers, in addition to Coreopsis ‘Summer Punch’, we have a large selection of plants available for immediate shipping, including our Heuchera Soda™ Series. The varieties in the series are medium sized, vigorous landscape plants that feature round leaves, great foliage color and have showy flowers with long bloom times. The showy flowers are due to H. sanguine and H. cylindrical breeding. With warm, earth tone foliage, the Soda™ Series are perfect for containers or borders. The series includes ‘Cherry Cola’, ‘Ginger Ale’ and ‘Root Beer’.

To learn more about our current liner availability listings, click here. Also, to place an order for our Heuchera Soda™ Series, or Coreopsis ‘Summer Punch’, contact one of our sales representatives at sales@terranovanurseries.com.

 

Retailers and homeowners, as you may have seen, Pantone has launched this year’s color trends, including color of the year, Tangerine Tango. As a tribute, the Terra Nova Nurseries team would like to share a selection of plants to match 2012’s color trends.

Tangerine Tango        

Echinacea ‘Tangerine Dream’, part of the Dream Series, has been on the market for a couple years. But, given 2012’s color of the year, we thought it would be fitting to include ‘Tangerine Dream’ in the mix. This beautiful Echinacea is everything a great garden plant should be. It has elegant 4” clear, orange flowers that have wide, overlapping petals. The bloom holds its color better than any we have ever seen, and it has a lovely honey scent. ‘Tangerine Dream’ also has multiple, wide-branching strong stems, making it perfect for mixed beds.

Solar Power

Heucherella ‘Sunrise Falls’ most closely matches the Solar Power yellow tone. This vigorous, trailing Heucherella has large, yellow, maple-shaped leaves and red veins. During the fall this plant’s leaves have dramatic red tints. The stems will trail 2 feet in a container enabling ‘Sunrise Falls’ to be a wonderful hanging basket or a super ground cover. Also, from spring to fall, this lovely variety produces charming white flowers.

Bellflower

Heuchera ‘Spellbound’ is an almost-perfect match for Bellflower. With marvelous ruffled foliage of dazzling silvers and tints of rose purple, this gorgeous variety is mesmerizing. In the spring, the purple tones are more prominent and when exposed to shade, the silver tones come alive. ‘Spellbound’ forms a big plant with a dense, multi-crown habit. And, like most of our heuchera varieties, ‘Spellbound’ is great in containers or in the landscape.

Cabaret

Cabaret is a beautiful hot-pink color, and we have just right plant to match its tone, Coreopsis ‘Garnet’. This stunning variety has numerous garnet-red colored flowers on a compact habit. ‘Garnet’ is perfect for containers and landscape for a touch of vibrancy. In addition, ‘Garnet’ blooms for months on end and attracts hummingbirds during the summer season.

Margarita

With a sweet and sour taste, no wonder Margarita made this year’s color trend list. Helleborus ‘Jade Tiger’ complements this tone very nicely. ‘Jade Tiger’, part of the Winter Jewels Series, has double-green flowers painted with purple edges. The backs of the flowers are often streaked with purple. Bred by one of the world’s top hybridizers, Marietta O’Byrne, ‘Jade Tiger’ is deer-resistant, drought-tolerant and grows well in zones 5-8.

Sweet Lilac

The soft tones of Cyclamen ‘Sweetheart Sparkle’ makes this variety is an ideal match for Sweet Lilac. Our Cyclamen Sweetheart Sparkle has kaleidoscope-marked leaves with a dramatic shape and colors of silver and green. This plant, part of the Sweetheart Series, has lovely pink flowers on cinnamon-colored scapes that bloom from August through November. ‘Sweetheart Sparkle’ makes an excellent spot color or ground cover in dry shade under trees and shrubs.

To view the rest of Pantone’s 2012 Color Trends, click here. Friends and fans, do you have a favorite Terra Nova plant that matches one of the color trends this year? If so, please feel to post your comments below!

 

Growers, the wait is over, our new 2012 Spring Catalog is here. You can download the catalog by clicking here.

At Terra Nova, we’re all about innovation. The innovation of our breeders has made us your one-stop destination for echinacea, heuchera, and the world’s hottest, premier plants. We sell plants that offer value and pleasure for your customers over all four seasons. Why buy a soft yellow Shasta Daisy that fades, when you can grow our new Leucanthemum, ‘Goldfinch,’ with true-yellow blooms that don’t fade for weeks? Our plants are bred to offer a vastly greater sales window in the retail setting. The expanding worldwide network of our new partner labs and rooting stations continue to improve our availability.

In our new 2012 Spring Catalog, be sure to look for the following highlights:

• 132 pages of delicious photography, informative tips for growers, actual examples of nursery-grown plants grown without PGRs, mixed container recipes, and information on our new plant programs
• New varieties in a wide range of genera are represented like carex, cistus, crocosmia, phygelius, polygonatum, and rudbeckia with novel color forms and improved garden performance
• 28 Series of plants encompassing agastache, coreopsis, crocosmia, cyclamen, echinacea, helleborus, heuchera, heucherella, kniphofia, penstemon, sedum, tiarella, and tradescantia

To request a copy of our 2012 catalog please call us at 800-215-9450 or download a copy at www.terranovanurseries.com.

 

Our latest and greatest Sneak Peek is here, Coreopsis ‘Desert Coral’. This stunning new variety, part of the Coreopsis Jewel™ Series, has large flowers of sun-tanned peach and coral that bloom for months and months. The old flowers are covered so quickly, the plant doesn’t have a rest period during the summer and fall months. With a dwarf, mounding habit and continuous flowers, what else does a plant need?

‘Desert Coral’, a hardy coreopsis can be used in mixed beds, containers and borders. It performs well in zones 6 – 9, and requires full sun for optimal growth. The average size includes 14” W / 9” H / 11” Flower Ht. To learn more about ‘Desert Coral’, click here. Growers, you can also view the Grower Recipe below for additional information.

To order this brand new coreopsis variety, contact a Terra Nova Nurseries sales representative at sales@terranovanurseries.com.

 * To enlarge the Grower Recipe, simply select the image and zoom in.

Our echinaceas are widely known for being non-fading and hardy, with an excellent re-blooming habit. We offer our grower customers an extensive selection of colors and forms. In the video below, Dan Heims, showcases a small collection of our popular varieties, including ‘Amazing Dream’, ‘Firebird’ and ‘Secret Romance’.

Which is your favorite Terra Nova echinacea? We encourage you to post your comments below. Also, to view our entire collection of echinaceas, click here.

 

We have a brand new Sneak Peek for our loyal grower customers, Coreopsis ‘Pink Sapphire’. This new coreopsis variety has stunning, hot-pink flowers with white eyes. A low-growing, upright plant, ‘Pink Sapphire’ blooms for 5 months out of the year. Additionally, ‘Pink Sapphire’ is one of our hardier coreopsis varieties.

‘Pink Sapphire’ performs well in zones 6 – 9, and it requires full sun. The average size includes 16” W / 14” H / 16” Flower H. Also, ‘Pink Sapphire’ is a self-cleaning plant, making it ideal for mixed beds, containers and borders. For more information about this lovely new coreopsis, take a look at the profile and Grower Recipe below.

In addition to this week’s Sneak Peak, we also have other wonderful varieties available for immediate order and shipping. Our Stokesia ‘Purple Pixie’ is the first dwarf Stokes Aster on the market. It has large, violet-blue flowers that emerge over a short, compact habit plant. A July bloomer, ‘Purple Pixie’ attracts hummingbirds and butterflies, as well as thrives in regions with high heat and humidity. This charming variety is perfect for mixed beds and borders.

Growers, if you’re interested in ordering either of these new beauties, contact one of our sales representatives at sales@terranovanurseries.com or place your order online. Also, to learn more about our full list of current liner availability, click here.