fairy magnolia pink

Hey there! I just returned from the Garden Writers Association symposium 2010 (click on the link to read all about it at The Garden Buzz blog). It was held last week in Dallas, Texas and I've FINALLY gotten around to sharing all the great pics, videos and info I gathered there.

As representatives for Tesselaar Plants, my colleage Laurie Riedman and I of course immediately checked out the Tropicanna Black cannas on display at the Monrovia booth. (Tropicanna Black, the dark-leaved and dramatic, yet elusive, member of the wildly popular Tropicanna line of cannas, will be widely available to the public after being held back for a few years because of propagation issues).

Tropicanna Black cannas at Monrovia display at GWA symposium 2010

At the Monrovia display, next to a beautiful stand of Tropicanna Black with its tropical, purplish-black foliage and coral-red blooms with gold-speckled throats, we made this YouTube video with Nicholas Staddon (Monrovia's director of new plants). In the video, Staddon shows how this purplish-black color is the hip accent for gardens right now, making for beautiful contrasts against yellow-lime evergreens and enhancing the purple-blue colors of a nearby clematis and Monrovia's new Bountiful Blue™ blueberry (featuring unique, blue-green foliage that turns pinkish-lavender in the fall).

Tropicanna Black contrasting beautifully with yellow-lime foliage:

Monrovia's new Bountiful Blue blueberry (also great paired with Tropicanna Black):

Over Staddon's shoulder, incidentally, you can see another Tesselaar plant – Fairy Magnolia™ blush. This new michelia hybrid, with heavenly-scented, blushed-pink blooms that are a cross between a magnolia and camellia, is the first in a long-awaited series of Fairy Magnolias from Aussie breeder Mark Jury.

While we were at the Monrovia booth with our video camera out, we also grabbed poor Steve Bender (aka Southern Living's Grumpy Gardener, who was trying to make his way to the lunch tables) and asked him why container gardening remains such a hot trend. We had just shown him pots of Tropicanna Black and the 'Bountiful Blue' blueberries in containers. To see his response, check out this YouTube video.

Steve Bender (aka Southern Living's Grumpy Gardener) talks about containers in our video:

Speaking of Tropicanna Black and containers, we saw other cannas from the Tropicanna line (the original, with rainbow-striped foliage and tangerine blooms, and the gold-striped, gold-bloomed Tropicanna Gold). Later, on the symposium's field trip to the world-famous Dallas Arboretum, we got some great ideas for using these tropical beauties. In this YouTube video, for instance, Dallas Arboretum staff member Jenny Wegley shows a beautiful thriller-filler-spiller combination with Tropicanna Gold at top (as the thriller), multicolored ornamental peppers (as the filler) and black ipomoea, or sweet potato vine, (as the spiller). Gorgeous!

Tropicanna Gold cannas (at top, the "thriller"), ornamental peppers (in the middle, as the "filler") and black ipomoea, or sweet potato vine, (on the bottom, as the "spiller"):

More GWA 2010 info, pics and video to come! Stay tuned – I should have it up within a few days, at the most!