Hinting at New Plants for the 2026 Season

Whenever we get new plant species in – We get excited.

Upon request, we’ll get samples. And so, the samples, some will go home with me, some go home with Dave, some go home with one of the other guys or girls that works there, and we’ll plant them in our yard. So we’re not only taking care of stuff that we’ve had for generations or years, we’re planting new plant material. We’re trying it. Is it everything that the grower says it’s going to be? 

We’ll take new varieties home, we’ll plant them, we’ll plant one in a display garden at the nursery, or, we’ll sell some too. And then we get feedback from those customers and find out if it’s really as hot as they say it is.

And we want to stay up to date on all the newest things. One of the things we’ll be talking about here in January is all the new plant products that’s going to be coming out in 2026.

I’ll give you a sneak preview, a new hydrangea came out. Proven Winners is a plant breeder, and they’ve been around for a very, very long time and probably one of the most successful marketing plant breeders out there.

One of the new releases they have is a flower on it. The problem is when it would rain and get wet and heavy, it would flop over. There have been a lot of improvements in paniculata and other specific varieties of hydrangea, but not in the arborescence family. There is a new one coming out for spring called Stormproof.

The cool thing about getting to do some traveling when we do that is we get to see the managers, heads of growers. I was talking with a gentleman up at Willoway earlier this summer at one of the meetings we had up there. He said he got to go to a test garden because he’s like, oh, I got this new hydrangea. I’m like, oh, another new one, great. There’s only so many types that we can carry.

He said, no, this is one you absolutely want to get your hands on. I started looking for it in August and September before everybody else knew what it was. So keep an eye out for the new stuff!

Questions? Email us at [email protected] or call one of our two locations: Portage (330-499-0101) or Everhard (330-492-1243).