20 of the Best Recent Plant Introductions

Experienced gardener Graham Rice regularly tries out new plant varieties. Here’s his pick of top performers to try in 2017

- Graham Rice

EVERY year the mail order seed and young plant companies splash “new” all over their catalogues and websites. It’s a word that always catches our interest.

Sometimes, the plants flagged as “new” are genuine breakthroughs, like this year’s creamy white marigold ‘Snow Princess’ – a lovely new take on an old favourite. More often it’s merely small variation that’s indicated, as is the case with Godetia ‘Pastel Posies’ which is simply a mix of pastel shades of this famously easy-to-grow annual. And although one company may say it’s new, other companies may already have it (perhaps at a better price) or may also be introducing it for the first time. So it pays to shop around.

The most interesting newcomers, I think, are often when old favourites are sparked with new life: a genuinely new colour, new flavour, new style, added disease resistance or developed for a new growing situation. Or sometimes, as with Cosmos ‘Apollo White’, they’re just better at doing what a similar predecessor did. We already have some understanding of the plants, but they now come with a new dimension.

Other exciting new varieties to hit the shops this year include the first trailing cornflower and a nasturtium whose flowers change colour as the weeks go by! And after last year’s dwarf thornless raspberry for tubs, this year’s hanging basket blackberry looks outstanding.

Some newbies are better than others. ‘Berry’, the fuchsia developed for its edible fruits, looked promising but the ones I grew did poorly, and whatever colour ‘Strawberry Blonde’ French marigold is, mine were not strawberry blonde! Perhaps you’ll have more success than me.