Perennials and shrubs standouts from California Spring Trials
Debuting at CAST 2025, these perennials and shrubs will make a statement in your customers’ landscape.
Digitalis Dottie Series
(Above) This new perennial series showcases cottage garden charm with five colors and a mix. This foxglove is compact, well-branched and requires less PGRs. Its uniformity and early flowering make it efficient for production; vernalization is not required.
Syngenta Flowers
Helleborus ‘HGC Ice N’ Roses White’
This new series of hellebore is heat tolerant and deer resistant. Large flowers bloom in an upright and outward-facing habit, making this series suitable for cut flower use.
ThinkPlants
Rudbeckia ‘Tablemate Gold’
Genetically compact, this floriferous rudbeckia has golden blooms with dark eyes and is perfect for small spaces and patio tables. It’s easy to care for and makes a great gift or impulse buy.
Benary
Hydrangea ‘Game Changer Blue’
Hydrangea ‘Game Changer Blue’ is available as an unrooted cutting. First-year flowering, once it flowers it remains in flower until a freeze. Hardy to Zone 5.
Green Fuse Botanicals
Heuchera ‘All That Lava’
Free branching with a mounded habit, heuchera ‘All That Lava’ features multicolored leaves with an extremely vibrant red main color.
Kientzler
Coreopsis ‘Compact MoonSwirl’
MoonSwirl showcases bright yellow, double blooms in a lollipop shape with a compact habit. A first-year flowering perennial, it is perfect for kicking off spring, with a sales window from late March to May. It will bloom repeatedly throughout the summer and is ideal for 2.5-quart containers.
Dümmen Orange
Dianthus ‘Scent First Lemon Sparkler’
This hardy yellow dianthus has masses of highly scented double flowers on sturdy stems. Repeat flowering, it is a bee and butterfly magnet. Hardy to Zone 5.
PlantHaven International
Ilex ‘Golden Sky’
‘Golden Sky’ has bright yellow foliage that brightens up narrow spaces and mixed containers from spring through end of season. Hardy to Zone 5, grows to a mature size of 8 feet tall by 3 feet wide.
Plant Development Services Inc. (PDSI)
Euphorbia ‘Miner’s Berry Bordeaux’
Euphorbia ‘Miner’s Berry Bordeaux’ offers striking seasonal color shifts in a hardy perennial. Deep red burgundy foliage emerges in the spring, maturing to a dark rose-pink foliage in the fall.
Pacific Plug & Liner
Phlox ‘Candy Cloud Pink’
‘Candy Cloud Pink’ blooms before salvia nemorosa and after phlox subulata, filling the perennial color gap. Its mounded habit of showstopping color hits peak retail in the early spring market.
Dianthus Supra Series
Three new colors have been added to interspecific dianthus series Supra for 2026: Cherry Picotee (shown,) Pink Picotee and Scarlet Picotee. This first-year flowering perennial is fast to flower and hardy to Zone 5.
Hem Genetics
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