Back to the Future with Beacon Impatiens

Elmer explains our bed of Beacon Impatiens at Field Day 2019

We could say that the past decade has been a quest to find an acceptable replacement for Impatiens but nothing quite fits the bill. There have been contenders—New Guineas, Begonias, and Salvias—but nothing caught on like the original. Here we settled on SunPatiens as the best work-alike, but the truth be told, nothing does the Impatiens look quite like an Impatiens. In our hearts, we want the real thing, Impatiens walleriana. We know our buyers want it as well, because we continue to grow traditional Impatiens for the people who still buy them and love them, downy mildew and all.

Now along comes the Beacon series of Impatiens from PanAmerican with new breeding that brings us back to the future: our beloved walleriana has been updated with disease resistance. Beacon represents the return of the king, armored up to face the new horde of barbarians that crowd around the garden gate.

We’ve also noticed that tucked into this regime change there is a new concept for the market: the premium Impatiens.

 
Glimmering dark ‘Black Pearl’ is elegant, eerie, and dramatic 

Ornamental Peppers are great for Halloween-themed displays—it’s the time of year when we like to get creative and they deliver when it comes to color and texture. ‘Black Pearl’ is an incredibly black plant with glossy round peppers, giving it an eerie yet elegant quality right off the bat, so to speak. When the peppers turn blood red it adds even more dramatic flare to a creepy old urn.

Colorful ‘Sangria’ lends a festive pop to Halloween arrangements

‘Sangria’ offers a different take on the holiday with festive narrow, pointy fruits in purple and red. These colorful little peppers light up a pumpkin centerpiece and make a skeleton head planter a little less stand off-ish. Our popular ‘Chilly Chili’ works nicely if you need some red, yellow and orange flames shooting out of a witch’s caldron.

‘Black Pearl’, ‘Sangria’, and ‘Chilly Chili’ are available in the 6-inch and 8-inch pot sizes.

‘Matrix Solar Flare’ is a new Pansy this season

‘Solar Flare’ is similar to the highly popular ‘Delta Fire’ Pansy, but in a larger version. Flowers are bigger with around an 8-inch span, and the plant tends to have a thicker crown as well. If you recall, the colors jump around quite a bit on ‘Delta Fire’, giving it a flickering quality when planted in mass. ‘Solar Flare’ mutes this tendency down—it’s mostly red with some yellow variations in the face. What piqued our interest? Better performance in warm weather, a trait we always consider for fall Pansies.