Fresh off the MANTS (Mid-Atlantic Nursery Trade Show) floor in Baltimore, I made lots of fresh contacts and found many exciting plant introductions that I want to use in my future landscaping projects. I am stoked for the 2024 gardening year and the new plants and ideas that are hitting the nursery and garden center shelves. In this post, I will review the plants and products that interested me, but this is just a small sampling that will be available at nurseries in 2024.
Going every year for over 30 years, I have seen the show evolve to its present state where the Baltimore Convention Center is overflowing with every kind of plant and gardening tool you can think of. And the plant lovers/growers/landscapers in the industry come in droves to see the new introductions, order their inventory, and get ideas for the upcoming gardening season. Wholesale to the trade only, there is nothing for the public to purchase, but lots to gawk at.
With over 1500 booths on 300,000 sq feet of show floor, the show is massive and it takes me 3 full days to wend my way through it all. And still I miss parts of it!
Houseplants Galore
With the upsurge of interest in houseplants, Proven Winners has a new collection called Leafjoy whose aim is, “Staying connected to and nurturing plants year-round”. This booth turned out to be one of my favorite places to browse, even though I primarily use outdoor plants, rather than houseplants in my work. But if you love plants, you love all plants!! Houseplants have come a long way since their heyday of the seventies and eighties. Leafjoy plants come with large informative plant tags with detailed instructions on how to care for your specific choice and attractive containers.
Browsing through all the offerings, I noticed at once these aren’t your ‘usual’ houseplants that you pick up at a big box store.
CowPots
Are you interested in a 100% biodegradable solution to potting up your seedlings? Peat and plastic free, and family owned, CowPots, are made out of the family’s dairy farm composted cow manure to make a fully sustainable product. Genius! I have used these for years and wouldn’t use anything else. Check out my Seed Starting post for more information on tips on starting seeds.
Soil Intros
Another interesting stop was at Rosy Soil, an eco-friendly potting medium that is bio-char based, for houseplants, cacti, and seedlings. A sustainable solution to mining peat fields, I really liked their blends of soil. Stay tuned for my reviews of this new soil.
New Plant Introductions
A huge draw for me, I want to know what new plants will be hitting the nurseries for the next planting season. Many of the new plants, I realize will fade away, but there will be some that will be a hit and stick around. Here are a few that I was interested in:
Colocasia Royal Hawaiian Waikiki drew a lot of comments and stares and I will be using this tropical as a container plant for my designs. Not the first year it has been out, but I couldn’t find it anywhere at retail outlets.
Aspidistra ‘Tokyo Skies’ from Southern Living Collection drew my interest, but since it was a zone 8-10 plant, I knew it would be an indoor plant for me. It was stunning!
I love silver-foliaged plants because they set off so many other plants with that contrasting grey foliage. Centaurea ‘Silver Swirl’ is on my list to get this year.
Fire Ball Seedless
A flaming red ornamental stalwart of the fall landscape, burning bush, has gotten a makeover to create a variety that isn’t invasive. So many people like burning bushes for their fabulous fall color and ease of maintenance and culture, that this is great boon to the landscape industry. The new variety is called ‘Fire Ball Seedless‘ and will be available this spring to wholesale nurseries. I can’t wait to use it!
Native Plants
Native plants are a huge and growing trend and I was interested to see lots of new native plant introductions to fill out my native plant toolkit. I get so many landscape requests, using only natives, that I welcome any new introductions to fill a particular need. American Native Plants is front and center with introducing unusual and worthy native candidates. Who says native plants are uninteresting and messy? These new ones might change your mind.
Plant Screens
One of my most requested solutions as a landscape designer is coming up with a good quick growing screen to block a view like a neighboring property and give people privacy. For arborvitae candidates, I have been limited to Green Giants which top off at 40 to 60 feet and a width of 12 to 18 feet and Emerald Green’s which grow 10 to 15 feet all and 3 to 4 feet wide. There was nothing in between. But now there is Junior Giant which will fill that need. Much more manageable in the smaller landscapes today, I am definitely going to be buying this one for my clients.
Another new screening candidate that I saw was ‘Skinny Skip‘, a cherry laurel that has a more upright columnar habit than the old species. A screen or windbreak for tough narrow spaces, this is now on my list to try.
I also extensively use evergreen Leucothoe, not only because of the different colors in the landscape and toughness, but also for their deer resistance. If I need a full shade evergreen plant that resists deer, I turn to Leucothoe and the more colors available – the better. Burning Love Leucothoe has dark red new foliage that ages to green in summer and purple in winter. It was at the purple stage when I saw it at the show, and I am sold! I love evergreen plants that change colors with the season and stay manageable in the landscape.
Deer Resistance
Another deer resistant evergreen is Osmanthus, an evergreen false holly, and this ‘Misty River‘ from the Southern Plant Collection will be on my list to use this year. Deer resistance in a plant is often over-rated, but Osmanthus is a stalwart one that deer have never browsed on and I love the gold variegation of this plant. Lightening up shade areas, this is another valuable addition to my palette of shade plants.
Cavano’s New Brandywine Cottage Series
Cavano’s is one of my go-to for quality wholesale perennials for my clients. They have added a new ‘lifestyle’ series of plants which is “an expertly curated line of premium, upscale plants focused around six seasons of interest” called Brandywine Cottage. Based on author, gardener, lecturer, plant breeder, and designer David Culp’s book, A Year at Brandywine Cottage, the plants included are both tried and true as well as new, must-have plants. Ferns, Grasses, Bulbs, and Perennials are all part of the line. David Culp, who was attending the show, says about the new plant line that, ” he hopes to encourage you to embrace gardening – and nature – as a lifestyle, something that enhances every facet of life”.
I whole heartedly agree with the sentiment and looked at the plants selected and the different seasons – Early Spring, Late Spring, Summer, Early Fall, Late Fall, and Winter – and see that his selections are things that I really like and have been using for years, plus a few new ones for me. Some of the plants like Aster ericoides Snow Fairy, I have been using for over twenty years and thought it should be more widely used. An aster ground cover that is tough and flowers profusely, I use Snow Flurry as a late flowering low mat for tough dry locations in full sun.
Cyclamen coum was also on the plant selection list which is an underused woodland ground cover that easily naturalizes in shady conditions and has fabulous beautifully marked foliage.
Spigelia marilandica Little Redhead was another pick and I love this under-utilized gem.
The one that I was most excited about was Pachysandra procumbens, the native pachysandra ground cover. A great evergreen alternative to the old invasive Pachysandra which is ubiquitous in older landscapes, it is a native that is deer resistant.
That’s wraps it up for a successful MANTS show!
