The National Initiative for Consumer Horticulture (NICH) report in 2017 revealed that homes represent 25% of personal wealth. Well-landscaped homes are more valuable in society. The return on investment for landscape upgrades is 109%. The Warren County Extension Agent for Horticulture administered a new program called the annual flower garden trials in the spring of 2017. The purpose of this statewide Extension Horticulture effort was to determine the best performing species and cultivars of annual flowers for Kentucky.

The horticulture extension agent and the Warren County Extension Master Gardeners planted 20 cultivars of annual flowers in May in two evaluation sites at the Extension Office. Ten plants were located in the front landscape bed underneath the University of Kentucky Cooperative Extension marketing sign, and the other ten flowers were located in the raised bed gardens behind the office. By having several varieties on display, it encouraged people to visit the beds and observe the different types of growth habits, tolerances, and visual characteristics of the plants. Extension Master Gardeners maintained the demonstration plots by fertilizing, watering, mulching, and weeding the beds each week. Once each month from June until October, they ranked the flowers on a scale of 1 to 5 with “5” being the best and “1” being the poorest.  

Extension Professor Dr. Winston Dunwell collected and tallied the results from the trial gardens with other participating counties in Kentucky. Purple Haze, Bandana® Lemon Zest, and SunPatiens® Spreading Pink Kiss averaged statistically significantly higher, while Surfinia® Summer Double™ Salmon and Headliner™ Pink Sky averaged statistically lower than all cultivars in the trial. 

The final plant evaluation data published in the 2017 annual UK Nursery Landscape Research Report. All interested Kentucky residents can use this data to make better decisions on which flower selections to purchase in order to beautify home gardens and landscapes. Because of this successful program, the annual flower garden trial gardens have returned for 2018!