2024 Gardener’s Idea book: A sure sign of spring
Order your free Proven Winners’ booklet or download it to get started right away
You know spring is around the corner when Proven Winners’ unveils its popular Garden Ideas book.
This year’s free booklet is another impressive effort filled with inspiring photographs of real-life garden ideas ranging from using annuals for high impact colour, to creating colourful containers. For woodland gardeners, there is even a section on their favourite deer resistant plants.
All valuable information to go into the spring season ready to create the best garden ever.
Whether you choose to order a hard copy (sign up here) of the more than 40-page booklet, or simply download it and enjoy it from the comfort of your laptop or computer, you’ll find all the information you need at the Proven Winners site here.
For more posts on past PWs’ Garden Idea Books:
Jazzing up the curb appeal with supertunias is featured on the cover of this year’s Proven Winners’ Idea Book.
The feature garden on the cover takes a jazzy, free-form approach to the garden with a pleasant combination of rocks, boxwood, ornamental grasses, a lovely container arrangement and massive plantings of Supertunia Vista Jazzberry Petunias.
Proven Winners’ calls it jazzing up the curb appeal and although it’s a little much for my taste, most gardeners will love the easy-to-duplicate look. Supertunia Vistas are extremely fast-growing and spreading annuals that I’ve used for years in my hanging baskets for maximum impact.
It’s hard to go wrong with Proven Winners’ Vista series – available in several colours and colour combinations. I’ve had great luck with their Bubblegum Vistas that add a hit of pink in the woodland garden in hanging baskets and in containers around the patio. While there are better flowers to attract hummingbirds and butterflies, the petunias get the job done.
In typical Proven Winners’ style, the booklet provides plenty of images complete with schematics of how the containers were planted. If your hanging baskets often fall a little flat, PWs’ creations are not only beautiful but PWs’ are quick to share their secrets right down to the number of plants in a basket.
From Supertunias to Superbells
Proven Winners move on to their second favourite hanging basket fillers in the form of Superbells, which is really their name for the more commonly named Calibrachoa.
The wide ranging selection of double Superbell varieties from pure white, through blue, violet, ruby, orange and yellows, makes them an ideal choice for gardeners looking to add a delicate touch to their containers and hanging baskets.
Other features include spread on the use of Caladiums, especially for more tropical gardens from Arizona to Florida that experience ever increasingly intensive high heat during the summer.
Proven Winners says their “Heart to Heart® ‘Lemon Blush’ flourishes in unrelenting heat and shade all season and looks fabulous doing so. Its vibrant tropical foliage shines in contrast to spikier drought tolerant plants characteristic of hot climates, contributing lush texture and color to patio pots and entrance beds.”
I’ll be trying some of those this year in some of our shadier locations.
From flowers to garden writers and Influencers
Eight garden influencers, including Laura from Garden Answer, California’s Janey Santos from @DigPlantWaterRepeat and Floridas Josh and Jose from @Mr.Gardeners are featured over eight pages.
Moran Amos’s (@coffee.and,chlorophyll) rural Wyoming garden covering zone 5A Northern USA and Eastern Canada, is another featured garden. Her garden is described by Proven Winners as a “zone 5a, rural Wyoming “Gusty Garden” is ripe with bountiful produce, happy birds and bees, and the occasional passing moose which really riles up her hunting dog, Hadlee. With only 90-120 frost-free
days in the Mountain West, she makes the most of every moment. In addition to growing many hardy perennials, Morgan enjoys trying out new annuals each summer.”
Got deer problems? Proven Winners has a number of suggestions for deer resistant plants to consider.
Perennials and shrubs of the year
Proven Winners’ announces their favourite plants of the year including a yellow-bluish variegated hosta and lovely salvia.
Pink Profusion perennial Salvia is a beauty worth trying to get your hands on this season. Proven Winners describes it this way: “Prolific and Perpetual. Enjoy vibrant pink flower spikes in multiple waves through summer. One of the best salvias of its type for the South and a must-have for drawing in pollinators.”
There are more favourites, of course, including a rose, hydrangea, weigela and sweetspire.
Here’s a great idea for those homeowners struggling with how to improve the look of a privacy fence.
More PWs’ Idea Book features
The booklet wraps up with features on garden planning and design, the resurgence of bicoloured and patterned flowers and a feature on vertical gardening with @CaseyLynnLawrence who uses seven small window boxes to create an impressive and beautiful vertical garden for a wood fence.
The finished result is simply spectacular (see image above) and worth considering if you are one of the many homeowners stuck looking at a wooden privacy fence all summer.
The booklet ends with a feature on houseplants and Proven Winners’ deer resistant plants.
A word of note about Proven Winners. Although their plants perform incredible well, they are cultivars and are not considered native plants and therefore do not offer the same benefits that native plants offer our wildlife. Some of their plants are particularly attractive to hummingbirds and butterflies, particularly their salvias, however, they should never replace the use of native plants when they are available.
Author Profile: Vic MacBournie is a former journalist and author/owner of the award-winning website Ferns & Feathers. He writes about his woodland wildlife garden that he has created over the past 25 years and enjoys sharing his garden photography with readers.