By Dan Rahn
University of Georgia
Anyone looking for new landscape plants should definitely check
out the Georgia Gold Medal winners.
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For a dozen years now, the Georgia Plant Selections Committee,
Inc., has been recommending each year a new, short 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 break up a vicious cycle in which
deserving plants remained relatively unknown because no
nurseries
propagated them, because no customers asked for them, because
they were relatively unknown. …
Each year the committee selects an annual, perennial, shrub and
tree and sometimes a flowering vine from a long list of nominees
and awards them Georgia Gold Medals. They announce the winners
first to growers so they can have them available when the public
promotions begin.
The committee decides the winners based on seasonal interest,
outstanding or unusual qualities, ease of propagation,
hardiness,
adaptability, durability, pest tolerance and lack of
invasiveness.
The winners
The 2005 Georgia Gold Medal Winners are:
Dragon Wing isn’t a typical
begonia when it comes to heat
tolerance. It’s more like a begonia on steroids. This
sensational
summer annual produces nonstop red or pink flowers from spring
until fall frost. It adapts well to hanging baskets, large
containers and landscape beds.
Georgia Blue veronica is a
herbaceous perennial that grows like
a
ground cover, 4 to 6 inches and 2 feet wide. It’s not a native
but hails from the Republic of Georgia (formerly part of the
Soviet Union). But it’s hardy in zones 5 to 8 and bears
beautiful, sky-blue flowers from February to April.
Rose Creek and Canyon Creek abelias are seedling
selections of
Chinese abelia. The former was selected for its low, mounding
form (2 to 3 feet tall and 3 to 4 feet wide), crimson stems,
fragrant white flowers and May-to-frost blooming. Canyon Creek
is
bigger (4 to 6 feet tall and wide), a terrific hedging plant.
Its
leaves emerge coppery pink and mellows to a soft yellow, then
green and finally rosy bronze in winter.
Glowing Embers isn’t just another
Japanese maple. It’s a
stunning
tree with vigorous growth rate and brilliant fall color. And it
adapts to a range of landscape conditions, thriving in full sun
and tolerating drought better than most trees in its class. It’s
named for the kaleidoscope of color its fall leaves provide as
they fade from green to purple, flourescent orange or yellow.
Creeping raspberry is a hardy,
extraordinary ground cover. It
thrives in difficult sites like hot, dry, erodible slopes or
ditches where soil moisture goes from soggy to arid. A
fast-growing evergreen from Taiwan, it grows 3 to 6 inches high
and spreads 3 to 6 feet in all directions.
To learn more about on the Georgia Gold Medal Winners program,
visit the Web at www.georgiagoldmedal.com. The site shows the
plants the GPSC has chosen since 1994.
(Dan Rahn is a news editor with the University of Georgia
College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.)
