{"id":4627,"date":"2026-01-29T11:17:28","date_gmt":"2026-01-29T19:17:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/?p=4627"},"modified":"2026-01-29T11:17:28","modified_gmt":"2026-01-29T19:17:28","slug":"whats-new-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/whats-new-2\/","title":{"rendered":"What’s New"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>When the weather is cold and blustery the best thing gardeners can do is water all the houseplants\u2014sparingly\u2014and hunker down with the new garden catalogs and\/or websites. I prefer the paper variety, but I am old school. So many vendors have gone to online-only offerings that I have to resort to the computer to get a full picture of what is new and different for spring.
\n\tStill, I miss the days when the late-lamented Song Sparrow Nursery catalog would arrive, plump with potential and filled to bursting with luxurious color pictures of extraordinary daylilies and peonies of all sorts. It was the ultimate calorie-free January feast and even though it threatened to leave me lighter in the pocketbook, I reveled in it.
\n\tHowever, time only marches in one direction and I can still revel in the many new offerings that vendors have showcased for spring.
\n\tThe word of the day, month, and year for gardeners is “pollinators\u201d. Just about every catalog and website is showcasing pollinator-friendly plants and landscapes, in the hopes of boosting our garden, porch, window box and container ecosystems. Naturalistic planting, with emphases on prairie perennials and grasses, comes right behind pollinators on the fashion wave, helping the pollinators while increasing garden sustainability. Drought-tolerant plants and species that can survive extreme weather round out the popularity pack.
\n\tMost of us love all those things, but we look for beauty, toughness, and, in the case of edibles\u2014good taste and high yields. Fortunately, we can have it all, or at least the merchandisers\u2019 descriptions say so. I am in the midst of figuring ways of \u201chaving it all\u201d without having to part with all my money.
\n\tEchinacea has been hotter than hot for more than a decade and the heat persists. New bi-colors, like \u2018White Tips\u2019, with lavender petals edged in bright white, increase the color possibilities, while double-flowered \u2018Raspberry Ripple\u2019 adds yet another entry in the fluffy flower category. The trend for unusual petal configurations\u2014quilled, spoon-shaped, or spidery\u2014has resulted in echinaceas like \u2018Prima Spider\u2019, a bi-colored variety with slender spoon-shaped petals.
\n\tThe ever-expanding echinacea array is mirrored by the number of new annual zinnias, botanical cousins of the coneflower clan. The Queeny series of Zinnia elegans varieties includes opulent double-flowered entries like \u2018Queeny Red Lime\u2019, a bi-color with rose pink outer petals surrounding shorter, lighter inner petals. Other unusual colors include \u2018Queeny Lemon Peach\u2019 and \u2018Queeny Orange\u2019.
\n\tDouble-flowered varieties of just about every ornamental species are popping up all over the place, seemingly part of the horticultural zeitgeist in these uncertain times. The simplicity of traditional primroses or Primula has been superseded by the lushness of doubles, like Bluestone Perennials\u2019 new double-flowered \u2018Violetta\u2019 and \u2018Watercolor Blue\u2019.
\n\tDahlia fever continues unabated, with lots of new entries for Spring 2026. Once reviled as common and kitschy, dahlias now take center stage everywhere. Swan Island Dahlias, an old, reliable vendor based in Canby, Oregon, lists no fewer than 16 online pages of new varieties. It is only late January and some of them have already sold out. Hang on to your tubers!
\n\tWith fewer younger gardeners able to afford their own homes, container gardening more popular than ever. White Flower Farm, which used to pride itself on showcasing elegant perennials like delphiniums and begonias, now positions ready-made container gardens\u2014with or without attractive pots and saucers\u2014front and center in their spring catalog. These pre-selected assortments are more expensive than purchasing the various elements and assembling them yourself, but they provide instant color and take away any hesitation novice growers might have about which plants work well together.
\n\tAnd if you want convenience, plus pollinator-friendly native plants, you can have it all by ordering the hottest North American natives from vendors like Prairie Moon Nursery. Pre-selected assortments include the \u201cColossal Pollinator Garden\u201d, the smaller \u201cPollinator Patch\u201d or the even more compact \u201cPollinator Power Pack\u201d. You can also mix and match varieties on your own.
\n\tThe cost of plants\u2014including shipping\u2014has gone up along with everything else, but most of the gardeners I know are savvy shoppers. Plants can still provide cheap thrills and great satisfaction in a million different ways.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When the weather is cold and blustery the best thing gardeners can do is water all the houseplants\u2014sparingly\u2014and hunker down with the new garden catalogs and\/or websites. I prefer the paper variety, but I am old school. So many vendors have gone to online-only offerings that I have to resort to the computer to get … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6,2,3,1,5],"tags":[2439,707,206,3254,1647,3255],"class_list":["post-4627","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fall","category-general-interest","category-spring","category-summer","category-uncategorized","category-winter","tag-catalogs","tag-coneflowers","tag-dahlias","tag-new-offerings","tag-pollinator-gardens","tag-zinnias"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4627","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4627"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4627\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4628,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4627\/revisions\/4628"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}