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Meet the National Recipes and Plants of the Year 2024
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Susan Martin
Meet the national plants of the year 2024! Each year, Proven Winners awards top prizes for their most exemplary annuals, perennials, shrubs and container recipes under the National Plants and Recipes of the Year program. This makes it easy for home gardeners like you to identify the very best plants in each plant category. If you are looking for a great place to start your wish list for the new season, this is it! Let’s take a closer look at the plants of the year 2024.
Annual of the Year™ – Supertunia Vista® Jazzberry® Petunia
If you’ve been following along on our socials or YouTube channel, you already know this annual takes the prize for our favorite Supertunia Vista variety here at Garden Crossings. It has been outstanding in our containers and landscapes since the day it was first introduced, and is one of our customers’ favorites, too. This extra-vigorous, extra-large petunia forms a glowing magenta purple blanket of blooms that spreads at least three feet across and blooms non-stop from spring through fall without deadheading. We love creating a head-turning display with it planted en masse and using it in container recipes like ‘Share the Joy’.
Annual, best in full sun to part sun, grows 1-2’ tall x 2-3’ wide (at least), versatile in large containers and landscapes, pollinator friendly.
Perennial of the Year™ – ‘Pink Profusion’ Salvia
We’ve been growing perennials long enough to remember when ‘May Night’ salvia was the gold standard, but WOW! — salvias have really come a long way since then. The Profusion series, including ‘Pink Profusion’, ‘Perfect Profusion’, ‘Violet Profusion’ and ‘White Profusion’ are vastly improved varieties whose names indicate how prolifically they bloom. Rather than flowering just in late spring to early summer, these plants rebloom in multiple waves all season and into autumn. Salvia isn’t just for spring anymore! ‘Pink Profusion’ bears bright pink flowers held on plum colored calyxes. It wins Perennial of the Year™ for the plants of the year 2024.
Perennial for zones 3-8, full sun, grows 14-16” tall x 16-20” wide, best in landscapes, deer and rabbit resistant, pollinator friendly.
Hosta of the Year™ – Shadowland® ‘Hudson Bay’ Hosta
Give this hosta a few years to mature and it will be one of the most outstanding perennials in your shade garden. Over time, its heavily textured leaves grow to be very large and the clump spreads at least two feet across. (One specimen we saw here in Michigan was more than three feet wide.) Their thick texture makes them more resistant to slugs and snails. Plant this special hosta someplace where you can enjoy its artistically variegated, tricolor blue, apple green and creamy white variegation up close and keep a lookout for hummingbirds and pollinators enjoying the blooms in early summer. It wins Hosta of the Year™ for the plants of the year 2024.
Perennial for zones 3-9, part shade to full shade, grows 2’ tall and wide, versatile in containers and landscapes (though ultimately best allowed to mature in landscapes), pollinator friendly.
Landscape Perennial of the Year™ – ‘Storm Cloud’ Amsonia
Everyone can use a few foolproof perennials for their landscape, and that’s what you’ll get with this durable native cultivar. It’ll grow on open, exposed sites, with the V-shaped clump of deep green foliage increasing in girth each year. Deer typically pass it right on by, but you might find butterflies enjoying the starry, light blue flowers in late spring to early summer. ‘Storm Cloud’ was named for its charcoal black stems that emerge from the ground in early spring. It wins Landscape Perennial of the Year™ for the plants of the year 2024.
Perennial for zones 4-9, full sun to part shade, grows 24-30” tall x 38-42” wide, best grown in landscapes, deer resistant, pollinator friendly.
Flowering Shrub of the Year™ – Wine & Spirits® Weigela
We are excited to offer this fun spirited shrub with dark foliage and crisp white flowers that pop open from lime green buds—a very unique combination of traits for weigela. It is showy even from a distance, so if you have a 3 to 5 foot space near the back of your garden to fill, try this one. Weigela is a great choice for anyone who needs low maintenance, easy-natured plants that only ask for a trim once per year after the late spring-early summer blooms are spent. It tolerates just about any soil including clay and drier soils, is deer resistant and attracts hummingbirds, too. It wins Flowering Shrub of the Year™ for the plants of the year 2024.
Shrub for zones 4-8, full sun, grows 3-5’ tall and wide, best in landscapes, deer resistant, pollinator friendly.
Rose of the Year™ – Oso Easy Peasy® Rosa
It’s a bold move to give a rose a name like this since old-fashioned varieties are notoriously plagued with disease issues. But the highly disease resistant qualities of this modern landscape rose make it a snap to grow, as long as you site it properly. As is true with any rose, that means choosing to grow it where it will receive a minimum of six hours of afternoon sun daily, and watering it early in the morning to give the foliage time to dry off by nightfall. Oso Easy Peasy’s hot pink flowers are unique in that they are just a little bigger than a quarter each, but they are produced in large clusters all over the plant, so it appears as one giant mass of blooms from a distance. It is a repeat bloomer that starts in early summer and blooms through the fall.
Shrub for zones 4-9, full sun, 30-42” tall and wide, versatile in containers and landscapes, pollinator friendly
Hydrangea of the Year™ – Let’s Dance Sky View® reblooming hydrangea Hydrangea macrophylla x serrata
Hydrangea breeding improves with every new introduction, and this relatively new variety is no exception. Let’s Dance Sky View is a reliably reblooming bigleaf hydrangea that is quick to produce its second set of flowers, plus it sets buds further down the stems creating an even fuller, more floriferous plant. If you typically need to treat your soil to turn your hydrangeas blue, you will appreciate that this cultivar is easier to shift color than most. With so many good things going for it, there’s no wonder that this newcomer has already been named the Hydrangea of the Year by Proven Winners® ColorChoice® Shrubs.
Shrub for zones 4-9 (Yes! Zone 4 is correct!), full sun to part shade, 2-3’ tall x 2-4’ wide, versatile in containers and landscapes.
Landscape Shrub of the Year™ – Fizzy Mizzy® sweetspire Itea virginica
Sweetspire is a versatile, adaptable, native shrub that’s known for being a great solution for wet soils. Fizzy Mizzy sweetspire kicks up the flowering performance a notch with masses of upward-facing rather than pendulous flowers in late spring to early summer. Their sweet fragrance draws in pollinating bees and butterflies and though you’ll see more blooms in full sun, there will still be plenty to enjoy if you grow it in the shade. The deep green foliage remains attractive all season. Fizzy Mizzy is smaller than most Itea, which makes it easier to tuck into the garden here and there to catch its sweet scent in the air as you pass by.
Shrub for zones 5-9, sun or shade, grows 2-3’ tall and wide, best in landscapes, deer resistant, pollinator friendly.
2024 Recipe of the Year™ – Polar Peach
This peachy-purply trio is all planted up and ready for purchase in 1-Qt and 8” pre-planted containers. It includes:
- Superbells® Double Amber calibrachoa
- Supertunia Mini Vista® Indigo petunia
- Superbena Sparkling® Amethyst verbena
Best in full sun to part sun containers. Fertilize once per week with water-soluble fertilizer for best performance and plant health. No deadheading required. 1-Qt size fills one 10” wide container. 8” size fills one 12-14” wide container.
2024 Recipe of the Year™ – Sunshine State
This four-in-one annual combo kit contains a total of seven plants to fill one 16-18″ wide container with a depth of at least 10-12″. Included in the kit:
- 2 Superbells® Coral Sun™ calibrachoa
- 2 Luscious® Goldengate™ lantana
- 2 Whirlwind® Blue scaevola
- 1 Graceful Grasses® Queen Tut™ papyrus
Best in full sun containers. Fertilize once per week with water-soluble fertilizer for best performance and plant health. No deadheading required. Want to go bigger? Add a second thriller plant to your pot.
- Categories: Annual Flowers, Container Gardening, Flowering Shrubs, Garden Perennials
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