Dear Reader,

Hi there!  It’s been too long again.

We are so slammed with new plants flowing into the new Plants Nouveau that I just can’t find the time to write much these days.  Please know writing is always at the top of my to do list, but lately it’s been replaced – too many times.

Sad, poor excuses, I know.  Many apologies.

My biggest excuse this week: The bathtub is full of hydrangea and hypericum blooms and it won’t hold water.  I’ve been filling and filling it all week to keep them alive because we have really big plans for them on Friday. I’ve had nightmares every night about them drying out.

It’s that bad or maybe I’m that crazy.

Don’t answer that…

I’m writing today with exciting news – to invite all attendees of the Garden Writer’s Symposium in Indianapolis this week to visit the Plants Nouveau booth (#36 & 37) to drool over a few of our 29 new introductions for 2012.

There’ll be samples of our most exciting new introductions for you to take home and evaluate for yourself.

Free plants!  Free plants!

We will have three exciting new plants for you to take home.  I think they are great plants, but, I value the feedback we get from our garden writing friends, so please take your share, plant them and let me or Linda know how they do in your neck of the woods.

Featured this year are:

Echinacea ‘Southern Belle’ the first double coneflower introduction to date with pronounced Echinacea tennesseensis blood in its heritage.  We’ll have blooms of this in the booth and samples for you to take home.  This is a normal sized coneflower, but the flower power on this is amazing and unlike anything I’ve seen in echinacea breeding so far.

Hydrangea Everlasting(TM) Garnet, one of the plants in our new gift-to-garden series.  Garnet is zone 5 hardy, it blooms on new wood and it makes a lovely cut flower (as you’ll soon see!!!), a super long lasting gift plant and a tough, long blooming garden plant for most of the US.

And last, but absolutely not least…

Colocasia ‘Bikini-tini’,  one of the plants from our new Tropicools(TM) line of zone 6 – yes, that’s right, I said zone 6 – hardy colocasias.  We have a whole line of these coming, so look out.  Anyone living in zone 6 and 7 can now reliably leave these planted in the garden each year.  A lovely, large, voluptuous, money saving tropical for your containers and mixed borders.

So don’t miss out on all of the fun and the super trendy, tested, tried and true new plants from Plants Nouveau.  Make sure you stop on by booths 36 & 37 for your take home goodies. We don’t have enough for everyone, so get there early to get the best selection.

One last note: If you should hear a slight blast of music  – run over and see what’s going on.

We hear there’ll be a wedding (or two) during the fun and frolicking festivities on Friday night. I will tell you there’s an incredibly soft and fluffy tutu and an overly loud and obnoxiously colored tuxedo to be worn by me and my “dreamteam” partner in creative crimes, Jim Martin, who I am grateful for.

Y’all knew Jim just wouldn’t be able to survive a GWA Symposium without a costume, right?

And of course, I had to try and top my raspberry truffle skirt from last year’s event in Dallas.

It’s all for the love of plants.

Happy weeding,

Angela Treadwell-Palmer
Partner, Plants Nouveau