New Annuals You Won’t Find in the Proven Winners Catalog | 2026 Preview Part 1

Hey, everybody. Today, I've got a full list of annual plants that I want to tell you about. And these are all new varieties for next season. So I'm thrilled to tell you about these, especially because none of these plants are from the Proven Winners family of plants. So that means they're not going to get the marketing dollars that we see from some of those other plants. These are going to all be new varieties that maybe you haven't even heard of. So that makes me kind of excited to be able to tell you about plants that you may be seeing for the very first time. I'm going to start with A's, and that means Angelonia. So the first one I'm going to tell you about is some new colors from the Archangel series. Now, Archangel is Ball Horticulture's kind of flagship Angelonia. It's relatively tall. It's going to be comparable to the Angel Face series from Proven Winners, maybe a little bit shorter, but really good series. And the color I'm most excited about is going to be the light pink. I have been on the hunt for a really good light pink Angelonia. The thing about Angelonia is that a lot of times the pinks tend to have a little bit of a mauve cast to them or maybe a little burgundy veining in them. So they never really look like that cotton candy pink or a pure pastel pink. They always have that little bit of dark mauvey kind of look to it. This one, I think, is as close as I've gotten so far. A lot of times the bicolor ones are going to be a little bit more pink, but those are going to be pink and white. This one is all pink, both parts of the plant. Absolutely love this one. So this is a really good addition, and the plant performs really well. Really good branching, lots of flowers. I will mention that when you're in a trial garden, a lot of times the containers that they use, I'm going to say, let's say they use 15 inch containers. They really do pack them full of plants. So a lot of the examples I'm going to be showing you are going to have probably five plants in them. Sometimes there might be a little bit less. But to get the effect that you see here, you could probably get away with only four. And in general, you could probably even use less than they use. But they want to show both these plants. They want them to look as good as possible. When it comes to Angelonia, though, if you're in a colder climate or farther north where you have a short season, you do want to maybe use more Angelonia than less because it tends to be one that it's a little sluggish in May. It starts picking up in June, really looks good in July. But it really comes into its own more in August and September, at least in our northern climates. So putting more in there, you're going to get bigger impact sooner. So keep that in mind. Another color that they have is the new Archangel Fuchsia. And I have to be honest, the Fuchsia might be a little bit of a misleading name here because when I think of Fuchsia, I really do think of a very hot pink kind of color. This one has maybe a little bit more burgundies and red undertones, more purpley than maybe the average Fuchsia plant or plants that are named Fuchsia. So keep that in mind if you're trying to match it with things. This is going to be a little different than maybe some of the other Fuchsias that are out there. But again, another really good performer. Because there's a lot of people out there who have never used Angelonia, either in containers or in the landscape, I have a couple examples that I'm going to show you just to help you visualize what they look like. Like in a container here, they tend to be a decent upright. They fill in quite nice. This first one I'm going to show you is called Hot Spell. It has the Archangel Coral Angelonia. That's what's up at the top. And then you can see there's a little bit of the Honey Bells Kufia. That's the little orange one with the tiny flowers on it. And then the Lucky Gold Lantana. This is how this container would look in ideal conditions. But I have to admit, sometimes my Angelonia looks a little bit more like this other example, where the Angelonia kind of gets a little wider, maybe a little flatter. So that is common with Angelonia. Maybe I just don't know how to grow it right. If you have any tips on getting Angelonia to be nice and upright, please let me know. But sometimes I have it looking really nice and upright, and sometimes it tends to spread a little bit. I don't end up with holes in the middle. I usually always have upright, but I also sometimes end up with a couple branches that go in any direction. So kind of a strange one. The next type of Angelonia I want to talk about is called Guardian Angel. And this series came out last year. They had Blue, which is, I will tell you, probably the best blue or purple Angelonia I've ever seen. It has a lot more branches and flowers, and those stems are really sturdy. They stay upright really well. I mean, they perform better than any Angelonia I've ever had. They also had another color called Berry Sparkler. That one was a lot shorter than the Blue. I found it did not grow quite as much. The new color in this is the new pink. And this is going to be one of those pinks that has that little bit of more purpley mauve kind of cast to it. So it's not like the light pink. It wouldn't be just a pure pink, but it is a beautiful color. This next plant is called an Apotenia. And this is a plant that you may not have heard of. It's also sometimes called, or it's part of the Dorianthus or Dorotheanthus family. The most common one that I know of is the Mizu Trailing Red. And I love that one. It's a variegated variety, gets little red flowers. This one here is a very beautiful golden chartreuse color. And it seems to grow very, very similarly to the Mizu Trailing Red. So I'm looking forward to this one. The regular Mizu tends to grow really well in the shade. So I'm hoping that this one can handle both full sun, full shade. That's one of the big assets that I find with the Trailing Mizu. So I'm hoping Golden Cascade does well in the shade. It's a really nice filler, does do some trailing action, actually can get some good trailing action going as the season progresses. Easy plant to grow. You can abuse this one. You can put it in full sun, full shade. You can forget to water it for more than a week. And it usually just bounces right back. So very, very good one. Next up are Begonias. So there is a new Dragon Wing. They have the pink with bronze leaf. So if you're a fan of those, this one is just another one in that family. The Begonia everyone's talking about, though, is Eye Candy. And this is a new series. And boy, this thing has huge flowers, great color on them. Fill out really, really nice. I do love the Coral Pink and the Sunset. Those two are really fantastic flowers with really beautiful, interesting colors. The Inferno was a real flower powerhouse as well. So I was happy with that one. All the colors look good. But I will say, you know, keep an eye on Coral Pink and the Sunset. I think you're really going to like those. These fill out nice. They're good for hanging baskets and for just regular, you know, containers or in the landscape. They do have a little bit of trailing action. So they're going to fill out really nice and they'll go over the edge of the pot. They're not like a true trailing Begonia, but they do tend to go over the edge. Really, really nice. Then in Bidens, the B Series is getting a bit of an expansion. So they have some new colors. They're Superstar. They've moved the Spicy Electric White into the B Series. That one was out last year. I grew it. I really liked it. Very, very nice. Now it's joined the rest of the family. And then they have Tweety 2026. But the color I want to show you is the Pink Buzz. This one flowered like crazy in the trial gardens. Looked really, really good. Nice and full. Lots of blooms. I saw it at the end of July and in the beginning of August at different places. Looked absolutely fantastic. I want to show it to you in a container, too. And I love how this container looks. Has a bit of that cottage garden look. So you can see the pink flower is the Bidens B Pink Buzz. And then that yellow flower that you see is the Portulaca Sea Glass Lemon Twist. And Portulaca is one of those plants that really likes it hot. Doesn't mind it dry. So the Bidens is one that can be pretty adaptable as well. So it's a good mix in there. And then we have, if you look really close, you can see some of the Calibrachoa. And that is the many famous Double Dark Blue. Now this is a more compact variety of Calibrachoa. But you can see by the time we got to July, the Bidens and the Portulaca were kind of eating up the Calibrachoa. Calibrachoa and Bidens tend to take off pretty early in the spring. The Portulaca, a little bit slower start. So I have a feeling this is one of those containers that's going to look different at the beginning of the season versus the end of the season. Because the plants that are going to be doing better are going to be at different times. I think it's going to be beautiful throughout. But expect this one to maybe have a little variation between spring and end of summer. And in Bracteanthem, more commonly Strawflower, there's a new series called Sunbrero. And I really like this one. It fills out very, very nicely. Almost gets enough flowers for it to have maybe the equivalent of kind of like Mums do where you just get this nice dome of blooms on it. And I noticed that with most of the colors, but I will say the yellow and the orange were the best performers in there. I will say the white, like most white Strawflowers, when the flowers comes in, they do tend to turn brown and look maybe a little more noticeably done and finished. That said, Strawflowers in general, once they start going to seed, they kind of explode and tend to look a little rough. So this is one that does benefit from a little bit of deadheading. It's going to look a little better. Also going to encourage a little bit more flowering. But in general, this is just a really nice series. And this is something that we're seeing a lot more of. Are these Strawflower varieties that are made for containers? Because traditionally, Strawflowers, they were more in the landscape. And then if you put them in a container, you wanted to put them with something else because they didn't really have that really attractive habit. But now, since the Granvia series came out and like the Cottage series and all those, there's a couple others as well. They tend to have that nice kind of tight habit. Lots of branches, lots of flowers all at the same time. So it's a good variety here, too, when we're talking about Sun Burrow. And new this year, there's a series of Calendula called Power Daisy. Now, this one gets covered in flowers. The flowers are smaller than some of the varieties that I started from seed, like I've done like Pacific Beauty or Pacific Mix or whatever. And I've done Gold or Orange Flash and those types of things. Those tend to have nice big flowers. These tend to be smaller flowers. But the plant gets very, very covered in them. They have a little bit of characteristics similar to the straw flowers. So very nice coverage on these. Really nice addition. I'm looking forward to trying these. I really like the mango the most. So that's the color we're going to try. We're not getting all four colors for ourselves just because it's new and got to see how people like it. To show you what this looks like in a mixed combination, I have a really good example here. This is the Power Daisy Sunny Calendula mixed in with the Be Pink Buzz Bidens. That's the pink one in there. And there is a many famous double light pink Calibrachoa. That's over on the left. That's that really pale pink double Calibrachoa in there. And then there's also the Fanatics Dark Blue Scevola. Beautiful combination. I love how these kind of play nice together. You can see how well all these plants are interspersing. Sometimes I worry about Bidens because they can start pushing things out. But this Bidens seems to be playing pretty nicely with these other plants. So that's a really, really good sign. And when it comes to Calibrachoa, every year there's a lot of new colors and it's really hard to determine which ones are the must-haves. But there is one that is standing out, in my opinion, and that is the many famous Neo Coral Flash. This is a very unusual color. The photos never do this one justice. It tends to be much more intense. And calling it coral, that's kind of tricky because coral can be a lot of things to a lot of different people. This one just looks quite electric, I will say that. But the big thing that I love about it is great flower coverage. You can see this one from really far away. It's absolutely stunning. And if you like this color, and again, the photos don't do it justice, I will say that you really do need to kind of get in there and see this one in person before you start mixing it with plants. I mean, it's going to look great with a yellow and a white or, you know, even probably some purples and that kind of thing. But if you're going to try to go with red, pink, or orange, you're going to want to probably have the flower in hand and kind of looking at what it matches because it's a very unusual color. It seemed to be pretty stable, too. From every place I saw it, it seemed to look pretty much the same, which was really nice. So there's a new color in the Cali Loco series. So this series came out last year. Really interesting multicolor Calibrachoa or patterned and speckled and different kinds of Calibrachoa ones. These are the ones that maybe don't fit in another series. This is kind of the mixed bag of really interesting ones. The one to look at, though, is the denim blue. This is a really beautiful flower on it. I love the color of it, but I will say that the marketing photos tend to be a little darker than the ones that I saw in the trial gardens. So take a look at this. What you're looking at is what I saw. That might mean that there's some color shift that might happen with Calibrachoa. I'm not real sure, but it's still going to be attractive, even if you get that little bit paler color that they show in the marketing colors. But really nice. You notice that that striping is a little more pronounced also in the ones that I saw. And before I move off of Calibrachoa, there is one more I want to tell you about. But this one is going to be a hard to get one. It is called the Cali Loco Jolly Tiger. And this is an exclusive to a company called Jolly Farmer. And they're based out in Canada. They do distribute to some parts of the US, but this one is not going to be one that I think a lot of people throughout the US are going to be able to get. But it's a really interesting color, that yellow with that kind of layer of purple splash on it. Very, very interesting. I don't think I'm going to be able to get my hands on it. I'm very, very jealous of people who will. I think it's going to be a fun one to play with. Hopefully it grows like the rest of the Cali Loco series, where it gets loads of flowers and fills out. So this is one that I haven't seen in person either. I just saw it in the catalog and I was like, that one would be one that I really want to look forward to seeing. But again, because it has Jolly and it has the little trademark or registered mark next to the name, I have a feeling Jolly Farmer might be holding on to that one for themselves. So we might not be able to play with that one. But I do look forward to seeing that one. Oh, wait, I do have one more there. Actually, I have a few more now that I think of it. Another new series is called the Unique series. And the two colors that I'm going to talk about most are going to be the Apricot Fizz and the Sangria Fizz. I thought these colors were really beautiful. They're just a very nice plant as far as flower coverage, beautiful blooms on it. I will say that the Sangria Fizz tended to have a little bit bigger flowers than the other ones, a little higher contrast. So that would be my go-to if I was trying to decide between the two. But both are absolutely gorgeous. When I first saw it, it was the Apricot Fizz that got my attention. And then as I saw it at a couple more places, I sort of liked the Sangria Fizz. So I could kind of flip flop on this one pretty easily. I did see in one of the trial gardens, the Apricot Fizz did kind of fizzle out a little bit, but it still had blooms. And there were a lot of new blooms coming. So it must have just gone out of flower for a little while. That could have been maybe some kind of stress it was under. I'm not sure. But it only happened once. So I'm not going to hold that against the plant. And you can see at this one, this hanging basket, that Sangria Fizz, I mean, those blooms were like petunia size. They got really, really big and beautiful. The Cabaret series has two new colors. And I'm most excited about the bright orange because a lot of the Calibrachoa oranges tend to look quite red. In fact, sometimes you may mistake a red for an orange, except for maybe in the Supertunia, the Dreamsicle. That one is like a really good solid orange. This one here, the bright orange, right on target as well. It's definitely orange, has a beautiful look to it. I'm a huge fan. And this thing had so many flowers. It was just absolutely covered. And it was big. This thing was really growing well. So if you're into orange, this is a really good one. They also did have, is it Lavender Kiss was another one that came out. That one was growing and blooming really well too. Much more of that light lavender color with that more purpley inside. Nice one here. We have a couple other Calibrachoa that are going to be similar to that one. That orange though, I think that's a must have in any of these series because we've been lacking in that nice, true, lighter orange color. This bright orange, it really delivers. In Celosia, the Kilo series has some new colors. The Fire Pink and the Fire Purple. I have to say the Fire Purple. I love the dark, dark leaves. And when I saw it, it was just starting to flower. So I didn't get to see how big the plumes on it get. The color was really good, but the plumes were still short when I saw it. And then the Fire Pink, I'll be honest. The color was a little bit duller than I was expecting. I kind of thought it would pop a little bit more. Doesn't quite look like the picture. It's a beautiful color and the leaves are a darker green. It looks really nice, but it has a little bit more of a vintage kind of muted look to it. I think it could be beautiful with certain plants, especially anything bright. It's really going to stand out against it. But if you're looking for hot, hot pink, this one might not be the right one for you. But they grew so well. The thing that impressed me about these most was the fact that they had so much branching. Now, that probably was because they were pinching and trimming. But boy, there were so many flowers on it. They were really full, really, really nice kind of growth on those. Absolutely fantastic. In Coleus, there is one series that is absolutely standing out. I'm so excited to grow these. It is the new Terrascape series. These are absolutely beautiful. You can't go wrong with any of the colors. Every single time I saw them, they looked great. They were beautiful. And what this series does is really brings us a whole range of color, and it solves some of the problems that I noticed with the colors on some of the other varieties. So the one to really watch is the Pink Ribbons. It gets beautiful pink stripe down the middle, darker edge, really nice roughly outside. I absolutely love this one. This one, you're going to love that one. I know you will. If you like pink, you're going to love that one. But I was also a big fan of the Paprika, which has more of an orangey flame kind of color to it. Really stunning. I love the more serrated leaf on this one. And these are all going to be a little bit more similar maybe to the Flamethrower series or the Color Blaze Royale series. They're not all the thin leaf ones like those are. There are some of the more traditional leafs on them, but they tend to be more that size and more of that kind of cascading kind of leaf pattern to it. But the Paprika is beautiful. I have an example of it in a container here. They have it with the Calatastic Cappuccino. That just looks so nice. And that Cappuccino is such a great color, and it has that hint of cinnamon in the middle that really looks good with the Paprika. And if you like that upstairs-downstairs look of this kind of container, I think this is definitely a good one for you. So having, you know, the coleus up on top and then the skirt of Calibrachoa, I think this is absolutely beautiful. I also think that all that jazz and all that lava are going to be nice pink ones that you're going to like. So they have that really strong pink color in there. So definitely go-tos. Other one you should look at, though, is the Lime and Shine. That one is a little bit more two-tone. So it's a very light kind of yellowy green along with more of a lime green. Great leaf pattern on it as well. Just looks really, really good. And there's also, I love the Mojave Sunset. This one is going to have more of a coppery finish on it. So like the underside is a little bit different color than the top part of it. And just very, very metallic looking. Very interesting color on this one. I think people who like that kind of color or that kind of texture in their garden, if you like those more metallic type colors, this is going to look really, really good for you. I still have the rest of the alphabet to get through of new plants, but I think I'm going to have to give my throat a little bit of a break. So I'm going to cut this one off here. I'll do a second video, maybe even a third, depending on how long it takes me to talk about all these things. So we're going to stop here. Go ahead and digest what you saw. Let me know what you think. I want to hear which ones you're most excited about. Are there any things that you are definitely putting in your plants or ones that you really want to be on the lookout for? I will tell you that because these are maybe lesser known varieties, it can be hard to get your hands on them. I say that simply because there isn't like one big central place where we can go and find out who's carrying each of these. You're going to have to contact your local greenhouse or nursery. These are going to likely be at independent garden centers. I doubt you're going to see too many of these at the big box stores. They tend not to carry new varieties. They wait a couple of years before they kind of pick which ones they want. So, you know, contact your local greenhouse or nursery. See if they can get the ones that you want. If not, just keep your eyes open and we'll see how these all do. That's the other thing. If you wait a year, you'll be able to find out which ones were real showstoppers. But I know what it's like when there's new variety. You want it. I want all these. So that's just how it is. So I'll wrap this up right now. I'll be working on the next round very, very soon. And I'll talk to you guys all very, very soon.