university and botanical gardens trials
For many years, Tesselaar has commissioned a number of universities and botanical gardens in the US to trial and evaluate the hardiness and disease resistance of a variety of our plants throughout a range of environmental conditions and climate zones.
In 2008 the research facility at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY. conducted and evaluated the following listed plants in their Trial garden:
• Flower Carpet® Pink, White, Appleblossom, Red, Coral, Yellow, Amber, Scarlet, and Pink Supreme
• Volcano™: White, Red, Purple, Pink with red eye, Ruby
• Festival Grass™
As part of the evaluation process all plants were rated on a number of characteristics and the independent results rated the ‘Next Generation’ series as the best performers in the Flower Carpet® range.
Japanese beetles were particularly bad this season and were detrimental to the growth and condition of the roses. The Cornell facility is surrounded on two sides by a golf course. The golf course uses insecticides while Cornell does not.
‘Next Generation’ selections Flower Carpet® Amber, Flower Carpet® Pink Supreme and Flower Carpet® Scarlet were the best performers of the season. They all had good ground coverage, continuous bloom throughout the season and relatively little black spot.
Their research report at the end of the 2008 growing season identified three Festival Grass™ plants which had survived over the winter. The plants began the season a bit straggly, however filled out by the end of the season.
It was most unusual for Festival Grass™ to overwinter in Zone 5. This is well outside our recommendations. The Trial Manager at Cornell is of the opinion that a good insulating layer of snow cover was probably the key to this result. This highlights that unexpected results can be achieved if you give a plant lots of protection, or if the natural conditions are in some way unusual in one year.
Cornell and Tesselaar are keen to see the 2009 results before placing any undue emphasis on this single year occurrence.
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