Proven Winners_Tree-Tags

Apr 5, 2019
Proven Winners ColorChoice Adds Trees

Spring Meadow Nursery has announced plans to add ornamental trees to its already wide variety of woody plants in the 2019 growing season.

Spring Meadow is partnering with the horticulture firm UpShoot, owned and run by Maria Zampini. She is the former president of Lake County Nursery Inc. and her family’s retail garden center, Champion Garden.

Zampini grew up in the tree business and learned from the best — her late father Jim Zampini who spent a lifetime breeding, selecting and introducing trees.

“Maria Zampini is the perfect person to organize and run the Proven Winners tree program,” said Jeremy Deppe, Spring Meadow’s general manager. “She knows what makes a great tree and understands the supply chain. Our Proven Winners growers and retailers have been asking for trees, but we wanted to do it right.”

The new Proven Winners ColorChoice ornamental tree program will begin with six superior selections that fit the Proven Winners standards of beauty and performance.

Chosen for their landscape worthiness, the six varieties were selected for good scale, form and multi-season interest. The new ornamental tree program is geared toward garden centers, homeowners and residential landscapers.

Ornamental fruit-bearing selections include dwarf, disease-resistant crabapples Lollipop Malus, with a tight, compact head, prolific white flowers and tiny, red fruit and Show Time Malus, with florescent fuchsia-red flowers and red fruit.

The program will also feature two  flowering cherry cultivars. Pink Snow Showers Prunus, a vigorous grower with clean pink flowers and dark green leaves and Weeping Extraordinaire Prunus which features extra-large, double light pink fluffy blooms.

Also joining the list of Proven Winners ColorChoice ornamental trees will be Avalanche, an Asian birch (Betula x) with proven borer resistance. Golden Shadows pagoda dogwood (Cornus alternifolia), is a small native tree with vibrant variegated foliage, white spring flowers and red-orange new growth. Crusader hawthorn (Crataegus crus-galli) is a thornless, disease resistant, rugged urban street tree with multi-season interest.

“We will continue to grow a wide selection of varieties that offer different color, habit, features, seasonality and adaptability to different sites — all that are worthy of the Proven Winners brand,” says Zampini. “Proven Winners already has a great network of growers, but any tree grower can participate by purchasing liners. We are working with some excellent bare root liner producers and propagators.”

For more information about shrub or ornamental tree varieties, visit www.spring.meadownursery.com.