Best Performing Plants at the 2024 Raker-Roberta's Trial Garden: Michigan Garden Plant Tour

December 18, 2024

Heidi Lindberg

Kristi Challender, Raker-Roberta's Young Plants, describes the outstanding performers from their 2024 trial garden from the 2024 Michigan Garden Plant Tour.

Highlights of Trial Garden in 2024

Our sponsored areas are full of the latest and greatest offerings from our breeder sponsors.

This year in our comparison row trials in the sun his year in our comparison row trials in the sun, we will have Angelonia, Scented Foliage, Salvia (annual), French Marigold, and Cuphea. We are also showcasing Pantone's color of the year, Peach Fuzz!
In the Shade, we will have Begonia tuberous, and Impatiens wallerana. We will also be showing Bidens in large containers. In our hanging baskets, we are showing New Calibrachoa, Begonia boliviensis and Alyssum/Lobularia
Our 2024 Specialty Cut Flower Trial bed will display the most expansive snapdragon comparison trial in the country. Along with our showcase rows of all the newest and greatest by some of the best breeders in the market. Also, do not forget to checkout our catalog/R&D screen live and in color.

Trial Garden 2024

RRTG24 will trial over 1,000 varieties in side-by-side row, hanging basket, and large container comparisons.

ROW - 600 raised rows containing annuals and perennials
HANGING BASKET - 250 hanging baskets (14") of trailing plants
LARGE CONTAINERS – 150 20” containers in sun and shade

Video Transcript

Hello, everyone. I hope your season this year went good as ours did fairly well, I think. I give you a quick intro into how we run our gardens. So we had about 20 sponsor readers this year that helped us put on our tiles. We have Row tiles. We've got 32 beds worth of gram row tiles. We also have 12 sponsor beds. So the role trials went in for sponsor beds second. It's quite the process for the sponsor beds. We actually lay out weed map, and then the design is actually strike handed on the bend and the plants are brought out and planted. We also have over 220 inch pots and over 250 hanging baskets. We also feature three years worth of perennials. This year was echinacea, uc, cheapsis and grass, keep these in the ground for three years. And we also feature an all American section where we have a raised bed, rows and pots, where we display ornamental seeds, ornamental vegetative material in edibles and pots. We also have 32 rows of cut flowers, which was full this year and looked amazing. This year, we feature snapdragons as our comparison. And for 2025, we're actually featuring fillers, which I think is going to be a really interesting thing feature. So getting into some of our best performers, one we had in our cut flower bed was Rebecca Chin Chimari from Ivy Garth. This was a great performer, great disease resistance. And it was about three feet tall, and I really liked it because of the variation in the flowers. Some were single, some were double. Colors ranged from gold to bronze. And they also had this tubular flower on some of them. Make a great cut variety or call bouquets. Another beckia we had in the gardens was from bold plant genetics, and they were actually in our trials last year too. All of them did amazing again this year. They were all very uniform. The flowers, as you can see in the picture, they're all huge like that, about 4 " across. The repeats from last year were these three Luna Marilyn and Emma. Then four new ones we had were SbecioGraffiti. You can see, they're all loaded with flowers. My favorite though was peach. I really liked the flower style on this. Very unique and I love, again, the color variance in it. I think this one would also make a really good cut flower if you have a shorter bouquet. But again, great disease resistance. We had a lot of rain this year for May, June and July. By June, we were 10 " above average, which is a lot, these did great. Next one is Dalia, Black forest Ruby from techie. This is a see variety. Very interesting plant. Not only that it's from seed, but the dark foliage was fantastic. It was a great showstopper. I get great disease resistance, and the flowers on it were, I mean, this doesn't really do it justice, but they were a great brilliant lead. It'd be great with garden. Nirvana vinca from Syngenta. We actually had four of these in the series in the garden, but this was my favorite. The black color, again, the picture doesn't show how dark this flower can be, but I really like the bull's eye effect from this flower. I actually had this at home in combo pots and it was gray all summer long. There's 44 colors. Helianthus sfinity double yellow from sgea. Okay. This thing, I mean, it was just jaw dropping. As you can see, from the flowers, the I was like this, picked as a favorite like every week. It flowered from the day we put it in and it only got better by the end of the summer. Great pollinator, very floriferous and, I mean, it a great ground garden plant for the background. Or. Slocha Bernie Embers. A great one from cicada. I compared this this year at home with Dragon's breath, and there really wasn't no comparison. This was great. The branching was fantastic. The more sun it gets, the darker the foliage. Again, great disease resistance. Also good in convo pots, but a really good ground garden performing plant. Lobelia masters, blue with eye, new from Benari sea variety. I know everyone, it seems like boasts on the performance of obelia in summer heat, and this variety really stood out through summer. I wish I had other slides of different varieties of obelia. But this was great. Full flower all summer, full. Didn't die back. I've got a comparison here from June July and August. You can see in August, I mean, it doesn't look the best. It's starting to show it's obelia habit, but it's still green and it is still flowering. I really like that. Another one from Syngenta is Petunia painted love purple. This is a standalone Petunia. Very unique. One of my favorites, great performing performance in the summer. The flowers stood up to the rain. They didn't get that melted effect. And I really, really liked the almost tight eye watercolor effect. I'm really hoping we get more colors to go into a series for this one. I also have monium hipster from nari, good see variety. We had this in our cut flowers and our rose. This is just a classic cut flower variety. It's been one of my favorites actually since as a kid, but it did great in our gardens this year. Salvia Slogon Lake from Hilde florist. We had four of them this year. They all did great. I really like these because of how sturdy the stems are and how much it actually branches and fills out. All the flower stems on these are darker, which I really like how they contrast with the flowers all the way up the stems. Do sperm Ocean sunset violet flare from Darwin. This little cute guy would be great in a rock garden. It flowered all summer and even on cloudier days, these were open, which I really liked about it. Agonia poppy. We had 50 orange beach from West hop. A great hanging basket variety. Good stem structure. They were full like this all summer and actually have a picture of the orange and the hanging baskets. All summer, you can see, that's my house. I just put that picture in there because I wanted you to see how that orange just really drew your eyes to it. Last, I have cordeum Ricky from Benari. This lit I don't know, it's grass and it looks pretty boring, but when it waves in the wind, it just looks like a wave in the ocean. So it's a great textural plant to have maybe in a child's garden or something. But I mean, it's about probably about 2.5 feet tall. So it'd be great in a garden. If you have a wide expanse, you wanted to put some grass in it. I would just be a really good textural feature.

MSU Extension Floriculture & Greenhouse Crop Production