When it comes to most retail products, I don’t need “name brand”. In fact, many times I go away from them. “Name brand” most usually just means who spends the most and is most successful in marketing. It doesn’t mean you’re going to get the best product for the best price. With plants however, name brand plants can be the best. Proven Winners have won our hearts at Thoms Bros. for providing exceptional performing plants. They search the world bringing vibrant flowering annuals, perennials and shrubs that deliver the most beautiful garden performance. When we install Proven Winners’ plants, we know our customers will fall in love. Their plants have been proven in trials conducted in numerous sites worldwide to be:
- Easy to grown and care for
- Bright and colorful
- Long-blooming
- Covered with blooms
- Healthy and vigorous
- Trialed and tested
Proven Winners continuously come out with new plants each year. Here are our favorite shrubs for 2023.
- Let’s Dance Can Do Hydrangea – FLOWERING SHRUB OF THE YEAR 2023.
Not just another pretty face! One look at Let’s Dance Can Do hydrangea tells you it’s beautiful – but there’s more to this innovative new hydrangea than that. It has the unique ability to create flower buds along the entire length of the stem instead of only at the top like other big leaf hydrangeas. That means that even if winter does its worst and kills back a portion of the plant, there will still be flower buds to open in early summer. It’s also what makes Let’s Dance Can Do hardy to USDA zone 4 – not only will it survive in such a cold area, it will actually bloom there! Let’s Dance Can Do also reblooms quicker than others: in other words, you won’t have to wait until fall to see the new flowers. And about those flowers! They are lacecaps, but the size and quantity of the showy sterile florets obscures the tiny fertile florets. Flowers are a luscious strawberry pink in neutral/alkaline soils and a lovely lavender in acidic ones. If you’ve been reluctant to try a big-leaf hydrangea, or been disappointed in others, Let’s Dance Can Do hydrangea is the perfect place to start.
- Limelight Prime – HYDRANGEA OF THE YEAR 2023
The next generation of ‘Limelight’ is here! Introducing Limelight Prime® hydrangea. In a very short time, Limelight hydrangea became one of the most popular plants ever – but that doesn’t mean that there wasn’t room for improvement. So we’ve spent years developing this new selection that does everything better than the original, from bud to bloom and beyond. Here’s how Limelight Prime hydrangea is different:
- Blooms much earlier, creating a longer display. This is especially valuable in colder climates, where ‘Limelight’ might not bloom until late August.
- Bolder, brighter color. As the green blooms age, they develop pink and red tones that are far more vivid and showy than conventional panicle hydrangeas.
- Stronger stems. Though strong stems is a crucially important factor in the panicle hydrangeas we select for Proven Winners ColorChoice Shrubs, you can count on Limelight Prime to hold its big blooms up all summer long.
- Useful smaller size. Limelight Prime reaches a very garden- and landscape-friendly 4-6’/1.2-1.8m tall and 4-5’/1.2-1.5m wide.
What’s the same? You can count on Limelight Prime hydrangea to produce dozens of big, beautiful, mophead blooms every year, even in cold climates. It also makes a fantastic cut flower, both fresh and dried. And it’s still one of the easiest to grow, most rewarding hydrangeas you can plant.
- Fizzy Mizzy Sweetspire – 2024 Landscape Shrub of the Year
A Sweetspire that literally stands out in the landscape! Its abundant upright flower spikes are bright white and carry a light, lovely fragrance that attracts people and pollinators. An early summer bloom time helps bridge the gap between the seasons seamlessly and its thick, dark green foliage is handsome enough to carry the show for the rest of the season. With a petite size, you’ll be able to use it in any size garden.
Top reasons to grow Fizzy Mizzy™ sweetspire:
- Unique upright bloom, like the exclamation point of the garden
- Very tidy, uniform habit
- One of the most shade tolerant flowering shrubs
- Ringo All-Star Rose – 2023 Rose of the Year
When you’re this colorful, you only need five petals for big impact! The pleasing flowers of Ringo All-Star rose may look simple at first, but this plant packs in a lot of interest. The flowers start out a rich melon-orange with a cherry-red center. As each one ages, it transforms to lavender and pink, creating a look of multiple colors on one plant. A crown of fluffy yellow anthers bedecks the center and attracts pollinators. As with all Proven Winners roses, Ringo All-Star is disease resistant and low maintenance. No need to trim or deadhead to keep those fab flowers coming all season! This versatile, floriferous rose can be grown on its own, as a hedge, or in a garden among other perennials, shrubs, or roses for an easy-care display of consistent color.
Top reasons to grow Ringo All-Star rose:
- Flowers start out orange and transform to pink-lavender for a multi-color effect
- Disease resistant and robust.
- Deadheading not required for continuous blooms.
- Continuous Bloom or Rebloomer
- Disease Resistant
- Deadheading Not Necessary
- Oso Easy Peasy Rose – 2024 Rose of the Year
Effortlessly floriferous! Oso Easy Peasy® is one of our newest roses, but it has already been decorated with a prestigious Award of Excellence in the No Spray division from the American Rose Society. It’s just that good! Its apple-green foliage resists powdery mildew and black spot, and its abundant magenta flowers appear in endless profusion from early summer through frost. The size and scale of this rose and its blooms is perfect for incorporating into flower gardens – not just because it’s so beautiful, but because it’s so easy to care for that it frees you up to work on other tasks (or, better yet, just relax and enjoy the show!).
Top reasons to grow Oso Easy Peasy® rose:
- Awarded by America’s top rose organization for its disease resistance
- Deep pink flowers appear in clusters for months each year.
- No deadheading needed to keep flowers coming all summer.
- Continuous Bloom or Rebloomer
- Deadheading Not Necessary
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