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By Dan Rahn
University of Georgia
Shopping for new landscape plants? Check out the Georgia Gold
Medal Winners.
Since 1994, the Georgia Plant Selections Committee, Inc., has
been helping Georgia gardeners improve their landscapes. Each
year they recommend a new list of beautiful, proven landscape
plants.
The committee is made up of nurserymen, flower growers,
landscapers, landscape designers, garden center managers and
University of Georgia horticulturists. It was organized in 1994
to promote the production, sale and use of superior landscape
plants.
Each year they select an annual, perennial, shrub and tree and
sometimes a flowering vine from a long list of nominees and
award them Georgia Gold Medals. Only the best of the best can
earn the top honors.
What it takes
To choose the winners, the committee looks at seasonal interest,
outstanding or unusual qualities, ease of propagation, hardiness,
adaptability, durability, pest tolerance and lack of invasiveness.
The 2004 Georgia Gold Medal Winners:
Chartreuse Joseph’s Coat is an
annual bedding plant prized for its yellow-green foliage. It’s
trouble-free in the landscape from spring to fall frost. The
stems and leaves both are bright yellow-green, providing
season-long color while requiring little routine care. It’s a
choice plant for today’s part-time gardener.
Anise Hyssop hybrids, including
“Apricot Sunrise,” “Firebird,” “Tutti Frutti” and “Blue Fortune,”
are the herbaceous perennial winners. These flowering herbs are
prized for their aromatic foliage, tolerance to pests (including
deer) and nonstop flowering from spring to fall. Just about
anybody can grow Anise Hyssop with ease.
Summer Snowflake viburnum is a
flowering shrub that blooms in spring, then repeats its blooms
throughout the summer and fall. The flowers give way in late
summer to clusters of bright-red fruit that fade to black. A
wine-red leaf color signals the end to another growing season.
Bald cypress is the tree winner.
It’s a native tree seldom appreciated outside the swamps of south
Georgia. But it’s surprisingly drought-tolerant and will adapt to
a range of growing conditions. Orange fall color and a peeling
bark are other outstanding merits.
To learn more about on the Georgia Gold Medal Winners program,
visit the Web at
The site shows the plants chosen by the Georgia Plant Selections
Committee from 1994 to 2003.
(Dan Rahn is a news editor with the University of Georgia
College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.)
