Ask Me Anything about Green Thumb Award Winners Discover the Best New Plants of the Year! 🌿 #garden

Get an insider look at the National Garden Bureau's prestigious Green Thumb Award Winners — the most innovative, top-performing plants and garden products selected by industry experts and home gardeners alike! In this webinar, a panel of horticulture professionals breaks down this year's standout winners across categories including annuals, perennials, flowering shrubs, houseplants, and garden products. Whether you're a passionate home gardener or a green industry professional, you'll walk away with fresh inspiration and must-have picks for your garden or client landscapes. 🌱 What you'll learn: Which new plant varieties earned Professional's Choice and People's Choice honors What makes each winner unique, innovative, or a problem-solver for modern gardeners Expert tips for growing and featuring award-winning plants in your home or landscape 🏆 About the Green Thumb Awards: The NGB Green Thumb Award recognizes outstanding new garden products and plants that are unique, technologically innovative, solve a gardening problem, or provide a new gardening opportunity — judged by a panel of industry professionals. 0:00 Introduction & overview Diane Blazic from National Garden Bureau explains the Green Thumb Award program — how professional choice and people's choice winners are selected. 1:10 Sunfinity Yellow Red Bicolor sunflower Jennifer Barnes (Senta Flowers) presents the newest color in the Sunfinity hybrid helianthus series — an endlessly blooming sunflower for containers and landscapes, 3–4 ft tall, pollinator friendly, and cuttable. Seed-starting tips included. 6:08 Bada Bing cherry tomato Mark (Cream of the Crop Tomatoes) discusses this 2026 All-America Selections winner — bred with novel disease resistance to septoria, early blight & late blight from Cornell research. Great flavor, crack-free fruit, short-to-medium indeterminate plant. 12:40 Sungold Black Bear potting mix Harrison Meakans (Sunrow Horticulture) explains how biochar replaces perlite as an aggregate in this all-purpose indoor/outdoor mix — better nutrient retention, stays in the root zone, carbon-sequestering, and more natural looking. 18:01 Yellow Sunrise Pothos (Epipremnum) Don presents this collector-level PAOS with brilliant gold variegation that fenestrates like a monstera as it matures. Easy to grow, available at major big-box retailers. Grows vertically for larger leaves, trails for smaller 21:18 Fescue Glow Sticks ornamental grass Diane covers this Concept Plants winner briefly — bright yellow spiky flowerheads, hardy to zone 3A, heat and drought tolerant, low maintenance, 2–3 ft tall. People's choice for perennials. 22:16 Encore Azalea Autumn Kiss Karina Stellatana Andrews (Plant Development Services) showcases this reblooming azalea with pink-bordered semi-double blooms. Blooms spring, summer & fall. Hardy zones 6–10, mounding 3–4 ft, needs 4–6 hours of sun. Year of the Azalea 2026. 26:16 Dipladenia Fired Up Coral Delilah (Suntory Flowers) introduces this upright, freestanding dipladenia — no trellis needed. Compact bushy habit with pin-wheel flowers pointing straight up. Thrives in heat, blooms until frost, ideal as a "thriller" in summer containers. 29:11 Basil Troiso Diane covers this 2026 AAS winner briefly — bred for downy mildew resistance with a tight compact habit, short internodes, and classic Genovese flavor. Grows 12–18 inches tall. 30:25 Unique Gardener aquatic plant kit Grant (Unique Gardener) demos a glass terrarium seed kit for growing water jade / mini baby tears. Includes LED light, gravel, mister, and seeds. Seeds go gelatinous and adhere to stones. Dechlorinated water required. Fish can be added. 35:25 Streptocarpus double flower & Causmia Dark Fire · Hydrangea Centennial Ruby Jim Dero (Greenfuse Botanicals) presents the first-ever tissue-cultured double streptocarpus — blooms daily indoors, orchid-like flowers, 5–6" pot recommended. Then Georgia Clay (Monrovia) covers Causmia Dark Fire (smoky purple foliage, hummingbird magnet, zones 6–9) and Hydrangea Centennial Ruby (true red in any soil, blooms on old + new wood, thick waxy flowers, zone 4–9). #gardeningtips #flowers #garden #gardening #plants #containergardening #tomato Grab your water plants at: https://uniquegardener.com/pages/unique-gardener-terraiums Tomato BadaBing! Seeds: https://all-americaselections.org/product/tomato-badabing/ Basil Treviso: https://ngb.org/plant-details/?Variety_ID=1853 - New Plants for Your Garden and Home - https://ngb.org/new-plants/ - Year of Plants - https://ngb.org/2026-year-of-plants/ - Combination Planters - https://ngb.org/combination-ideas/ - Garden Products - https://ngb.org/gardening-products/ - Shop Our Members - https://ngb.org/shop-our-members/ Don't forget to subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/@NationalGardenBureau Follow us on: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nationalgardenbureau Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/national_garden_bureau/ Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/nationalgarden/