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| | Flower Day May Be Over, but the Photos Live On! As autumn approaches (it takes a while here in South Carolina!), we're getting nostalgic for our summer  garden and especially for Flower Day, the annual occasion on which we throw open the gates and welcome gardeners, photographers, bird-watchers, nature lovers, and everyone else into the Park Seed gardens. If you weren't able to join us this year, you might enjoy seeing a few photos of the day on Flickr: Click Here to view our photos on Flickr This year, Flower Day was especially informative, with a popular talk on "bees and biologicals" for the garden. It was also delicious — we hosted a vegetable tasting, where visitors could try varieties straight from our gardens! As always, thousands of visitors thronged to Park Seed. We were delighted to meet new customers and greet returning friends. The weather cooperated, the mood was light-hearted, and we think a great time was had by all! | | | 
| Verbena Lanai® Candy Cane Wins it All! The 2013 winners of the American Garden Award have been announced, and this charming peppermint-striped Verbena has walked off with Grand Prize! And it's not surprising, considering how bright, beautiful, and long-lasting the blooms are. This is not your grandmother's Verbena: the foliage is super-healthy and the bloom season seems endless. Great for baskets, window boxes, planters, and garden beds. Congrats,  Candy Cane! Two other contestants were singled out for honors as well: Zinnia Zahara™ Cherry got the second-most number of votes, with its bushy landscape habit (just great for perking up sunny beds, lining the driveway, and edging garden paths!) and ultra-bold blooms by the many dozen. Among Park gardeners, the Zahara™ series is among the most popular of all, so we're not surprised that home gardeners across the country voted for it! Right behind Zahara™ in  the vote count was Impatiens SunPatiens® Compact Electric Orange. SunPatiens® is another of our best sellers, and this new color is nothing short of sizzling! For all of us with garden beds that wind in and out of sun and shade, the sun-tolerant SunPatiens® are a necessity we simply cannot live without! If you're not familiar with the American Garden Award (AGA), you're probably not alone! This is a new award, introduced only a few years ago. It lets home gardeners vote on their favorite flowering plant from several popular candidates. For more information, visit the American Garden Award (AGA) website by clicking this link: https://www.americangardenaward.com/ Thanks for voting! | | | 
| | New All-America Selection Winners -- Coming Soon! Two new varieties from seed have just been given All-America Selection (AAS) honors, and will soon be available from us here at Park Seed. As an official AAS Trial Garden, we had the pleasure of watching these two winners grow all season long, and we have to say that we were very impressed with their performance. So let's officially welcome Gaura Sparkle White and French Bean Mascotte, and find out a little more about what makes them winners for American gardens: Gaura lindheimeri is a perennial native to Louisiana and Texas, thriving in lean, well-drained soils receiving plenty of heat and not too much water. It's an ethereal kind of beauty, with its starry blooms on long, arching stems that bob above stockier plants in the garden. Sparkle is a huge improvement over older Gaura varieties — it begins to flower just 3 months after sowing, and keeps going from late spring through summer in most climates. You don't have to pinch the young plants to help them to branch; they're eager to spread, setting plenty of long, elegant flower stems holding butterfly-shaped blooms of pink and white. Super-easy, this is a carefree perennial to layer above your lower-growing, bushier perennials in the border, and to grace large containers. Mascotte is a container bean just right for patio pots and window boxes. This bush-type plant is just 16 to 18 inches high and less than a foot wide, yet covers itself in elegant and delicious haricot verts in less than 2 months from sowing. Stringless and slender, these 5- to 6-inch green pods are packed with rich flavor and crunchy texture. Even the spring blooms are attractive — clouds of white to greet the new growing season! Very disease-resistant and heavy-bearing, this bean may be compact, but it's a powerhouse. You'll want to try both of these for the spring garden, and they will appear in our 2014 big seed catalog. But if you'd like to get a head start on the season (hello, south Florida and New Orleans!) or simply want to secure your seed packets before the rush is on, look for them to debut on our website very soon! | 
| Are You Growing a Patio Pantry? It's happening more and more: the vegetable patch and the orchard are slimming down and moving right up onto the patio, deck, porch, and even balcony! Container-sized edibles are among the most popular plants in American gardens today, with more and more tasty treats to choose from on healthy, highly productive plants! This season, BrazelBerries® are leading the way, and we think they're going to join that original mav erick of the patio pot, Blueberry Sunshine Blue (still a fabulous choice for beauty and flavor!), as classics for every garden. Ultra-tiny BrazelBerries® Jelly Bean™ is the smallest and cutest Blueberry yet, while BrazelBerries® Raspberry Shortcake™ wows with vanilla-flavored red berries and fragrant flowers, and BrazelBerries® Peach Sorbet Blueberry boasts 4 colors on every leaf, not to mention bright pink blooms! The BrazelBerries® all combine generous fruit production with beautiful foliage and flowers on a compact habit. In other words, the plants look as good as the berries taste — and they're easy to grow! No wonder they're the hottest plant of the season! But berries are just the beginning of the patio offerings available to American gardeners. Citrus trees from orange to lemon to lime are now sized down for container growth. Easy to move into the warm house for winter, these vigorous trees are fragrant and attractive, with glossy foliage and scented blooms to complement their fruit. Tropical and semi-tropical fruit is always popular as an ornamental. The dwarf banana tree is one of our bestsellers, and we also feature a stunning pineapple, a kumquat, and the novelty miracle fruit. If it's sweetness you crave, choose a fruit tree for the patio and enjoy the homegrown goodness of natural sugars! Many vegetable varieties have now been selected specifically for planter or hanging basket growth. From Tomato Lizzano to Pepper Atris, your favorite summer crops are fully represented. There's even a dwarf Okra, a container-sized eggplant, and much more! | 
| And the winners are . . . Well, the good news is that Park gardeners everywhere have bumper crops, beds of flowers, and beautiful borders! We were delighted with the response to our photo contest, and we think you will be too — just take a look. Among all the fine entries, we have two winners, who will each receive a $25 Gift Certificate from Park Seed: Danielle F. and Krista D.. Both winning gardens are vegetable patches, and what feasts are growing there! Thank you, Danielle and Krista, for providing such inspiration to gardeners everywhere! And many thanks to everyone who shared their beautiful garden photos with us. Click here to view all of the entries to the Garden Goodness Photo Contest! | |  | | | |
