Making the Best Plants Better
When Proven Winners® was created, the main principle was to introduce the best annuals in the world — plants with exceptional garden performance that give both growers and gardeners real reasons to choose them. We work hard every day to make that vision a reality. The person most responsible for delivering on that promise is our Chief Product Development Officer, Kevin Hurd. Kevin and his team search the world for interesting new annuals to trial for Proven Winners. It's a very cool, unusual and stressful job. His endeavors are the linchpin for our continued success. Here's an insider look into how Proven Winners continues to raise the bar for annual plants, written in Kevin's own words.
CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENTS
As an industry, the brand-new plants usually receive the lion's share of the fanfare and I have to admit, I'm just as guilty. Introducing a brand-new genus or a new annual hybrid is exciting for a plantsperson. There is a huge amount of joy when an industry colleague asks, "What in the world is that?"
Plants like Diamond Frost® Euphorbia or Blue My Mind® Evolvulus are major milestones and should be celebrated, but we shouldn't forget that a lot of breeding companies are also working to improve the older genetics too. These improvements benefit everyone in the supply chain. Increased disease resistance, better branching, improved performance, along with many other developments make both growers and gardeners more successful. With many new people gardening, these improvements could prove key in keeping the gardening public engaged.
A great example is Supertunia® Royal Velvet® II. The original Royal Velvet® was in the Proven Winners® annual lineup for almost 20 years, a best-selling variety beloved by many, but we knew we could build on it. It took countless breeding attempts to find the new version, and today it stands as one of our top-selling annuals. Another example is Supertunia Vista® Bubblegum® II, our best-selling annual overall — a reimagining of one of the most recognized Petunias in the industry. Both are reminders that improving a great annual can be just as meaningful as introducing a new one.
To help gardeners and retailers identify the standouts from our lineup, we recognize an Annual of the Year, a Landscape Annual of the Year, and a Petunia of the Year each season through our National Plants of the Year program. These aren't brand-new introductions — they're annuals that have proven themselves in gardens and trials over time and earned a broader spotlight. Our 2028 picks, Aromagica® Purple Nemesia, Superlophus™ Sunglow Oenothera, and Supertunia® Pink Tiara Petunia, are a good example of the range the program is designed to celebrate.
STRONG TRENDS IN HERBS AND VEGETABLES
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A desire to add an edible line to Proven Winners® goes back even before I joined the team nine years ago. My predecessor, Dr. Rick Schoellhorn, made several attempts, but finding fruits, herbs, and vegetables that are truly distinctive is not an easy task for a company new to that category. From my perspective, I was seeing many of my friends finally getting into gardening, but they weren’t starting with Petunias or Hydrangeas. For the most part, they were planting vegetables and herbs. I was excited that they were finally starting to pick up gardening, but in a category that we hadn’t broken into yet.
Things changed when Adam, who had just completed his Master’s degree under Dr. Dave Clark at the University of Florida, joined the group. Adam had been working with basil and breeding towards Downy Mildew resistance. When he graduated, there wasn’t a finished product yet, but Dr. Clark continued with the project. After some more breeding, Amazel® Basil was finally ready. It was the product that we had been looking for to help us kick off Proven Harvest®, our vegetable, fruit and herb line. Amazel Basil and its Downy Mildew resistance continues to win awards across the U.S.
To add to the line, we again found truly unique breeding right down the hall at the University of Florida with Dr. Harry Klee. Dr. Klee had been working on tomato breeding and already had two outstanding products. In these products, he had successfully married modern disease resistance with heirloom flavor — a trait that has often been lost in modern tomato breeding. Given that his program was based in Florida, he also had plants that performed well through the summers at all of our trial stations. This whole article could be about those two tomatoes, but instead, I encourage you to read Slate’s article, “This Is the Perfect Tomato”, to learn the full background.
BEATING THE HEAT
One of our ongoing priorities is finding annuals that perform for our Southern customers. It's not that we're ignoring our customers in Iowa or Pennsylvania; any annual that can reliably go through the summer in the South makes a fantastic plant for the rest of the country as well.
A big step forward was moving our trial station out of California and ramping up our trials in Florida. We have been trialing annuals in Florida for more than 20 years now, and we have continued to expand that space to approximately three linear miles. The increased trialing has helped us identify some outstanding performers. Suncredible® Yellow Helianthus, Proven Accents® Sweet Caroline Medusa™ Ipomoea, Luscious® Royale Red Zone™ Lantana, Truffula® Pink Gomphrena, and Superbells® Lemon Slice® Calibrachoa are a few of my favorites from that work.
To highlight our progress in this area, we've also teamed up with Norman Winter, "The Garden Guy" to reach more consumers about our Heat Is On™ collection. Norman is a southern gardening expert and syndicated columnist with over 30 years of experience managing trial gardens and botanical gardens in the South.
It's hard to predict what the coming years will bring to Proven Winners, but I'm sure that our industry's resourceful plant breeders will continue to wow us with their incredible work. I am looking forward to every step of the process!
