When flower columnists Pam and Frank Arnosky wrote their last regular column in September 2001, Frank promised that he would send something occasionally “preferably from a bar in Costa Rica.”

I happen to know that the Arnoskys are in Costa Rica, and I have checked my fax machine and email Inbox every day, hoping for an article from them. So far, they haven’t gotten in touch. The beaches and rainforests must be too beautiful for them to spend any time hanging out in bars, writing to us.

That leaves me to write the article that the Arnoskys have written every year for the past seven years: What’s new?

Fortunately, like most flower growers, I have been keeping a sharp eye out for new flowers. Novelty is crucial in this business. New flowers stir up interest among our customers who are perhaps getting blase about all of our beautiful regulars. Even more important, new flowers are good for the flower grower’s psyche. We learn about something new, we hear its praises sung by those trying to sell it to us, and we dream of being the first in the market with this astonishing novelty. We want to hear people exclaim over it, asking us what it is. Having a new flower makes us feel smart.

So let’s take a look at some of the new varieties and cultivars that offer you the hope of such an ego trip this year. Most varieties are available from numerous seed companies; a list of the ones I used for this article is on page 15.

Lisianthus
This incredible flower, virtually unknown by the public a decade ago, has soared in popularity and production, which has prompted the breeders to keep working on new cultivars and colors. The most exciting new lissie this year, in my opinion, is the Avila Deep Rose. Philip Katz of Pan American Seeds brought a bucket of these from California to Des Moines, Iowa, last summer for a regional meeting of the Association of Specialty Cut Flower Growers. The color is deeper and more intense than most pink lisianthus. The flowers are big, ruffly doubles.

The Avila series, which includes a very deep purple, an ivory, a blue rim and a rose rim, are bred for winter flowering in greenhouse production. I have grown them in the hoophouse in summer and they flower just as well and at the same time as Echo.

Another series, bred for spring flowers, is the Balboa series. This year, new colors in Balboas include purple, yellow and white. I have grown the Balboa Blue Blush and found that it, too, bloomed around the same time as other lissies. The color was gorgeous, but production was significantly less than Echo. However, I have talked to growers elsewhere who thought yield was great on these. If you haven’t grown a blue blush, you should try either the Balboa or Catalina and see how they do for you.

I learned last summer that some florists have started referring to double lisianthus as ‘Mariachis.’ No doubt a wholesaler or grower has promoted this particular series, leaving the impression that the cultivar name is synonymous with the double flower form. So don’t be put off if you get a request for ‘Mariachi’ – take in those Echos, Avilas and the other doubles, and your customers probably will snap them up. As for the ‘Mariachi’ series, they are great – robust plants, many stems, big flowers with many petals. But they cost more than Echo and aren’t necessarily better in my experience. I grew the Mariachi Orchid and Lime Green last year and was pleased with the number of stems they produced, but unimpressed with the colors. The orchid got dull and grayish in the summer heat and the lime green looked off-white. They looked better in cool weather.
If you haven’t already started your own lisianthus seed, it’s probably too late in most parts of the country. Lisianthus are extremely slow growing, and most growers start the seed in December or January. But you should be able to find plugs of most varieties from a specialty plug producer such as Headstart Nursery.You have to order through a broker such as Germania or a local sales rep if you have one.

Dianthus
New this year is the cultivar ‘Cinderella.’ This is a sweet william type that doesn’t require vernalization, and blooms 21 to 25 weeks after sowing. You can start seeds now or buy plugs and have sweet william in early summer. Often, people don’t get excited about sweet william because most of the stuff on the wholesale market is picked too early, when only a few blooms are open. Wait until the head is almost in full bloom, and you’ll get a completely different response from your customers. They will fall in love with the colors and gentle fragrance of this wonderful cut flower.

The 2000 introduction ‘Bouquet Purple’ continues to win kudos from organizations that evaluate new plants. I join my voice in praise. This dianthus also needs no vernalization, and it blooms in just 17 weeks from sowing. It has thin, wiry but strong stems with clusters of airy, frilly rosy purple flowers. It bloomed all summer in the hoophouse here and was very frost-tolerant in fall. It topped out at about 18 inches, but that was good enough for most uses. If you haven’t grown it yet, this is definitely one worth trying.

Sunflowers
As usual, there are numerous new sunflower varieties, and they all sound great in the catalogs. But as you may have discovered, the catalogs don’t always help you figure out which varieties are best for your market. Sunflowers are extremely diverse in color, habit and form, and those that excel for one purpose, such as florist sales, may not work well for a different purpose, such as bouquets. Luckily, we have MaryLee Johnson, the cut flower expert at Germania Seeds, to sort them out. Marylee has her own farm and she sells to florists. She also travels extensively to look at new varieties on behalf of Germania. So she knows what we need to know.

Here is her advice on the new varieties:
•’Starburst Lemon Aura’ is a lovely primrose yellow version of the older variety ‘Starburst Aura’. It’s a pollenless, semi-double sunflower with elongated outer petals. It’s a branching variety, so it has many stems per plant. The blooms are about 6 inches and smaller. We saw buckets of this at the San Diego Floral Trade Center last fall, and they were terrific.
•’Sunny’ is not brand new, but it’s being promoted more this year because it’s similar to ‘Sunrich Orange’, an older favorite that is in short supply. ‘Sunny’ is a pollenless, single-stemmed variety with 6-inch blooms of golden yellow petals and dark centers. The petals open all the way, unlike the popular ‘Sunbright’ with its cupped petals. ‘Sunny’ can be grown on a 4×5-inch spacing for smaller blooms.
•’Indian Blanket’ is a branching variety with pollenless double and semi-double flowers in shades of red, cream and yellow.
•’Jade’ is billed as the first lime green sunflower. (And we all know how popular lime green is these days!) MaryLee grew it herself and found that the center is lime green and the petals are cream. Flowers on the branching plants also were quite small – a little bigger than an ‘Oklahoma’ zinnia. She suggests giving the plants 12 inch spacing and pinching them to get longer laterals. When she tried to grow it as a single stem, the buds all opened close to the stem, looking like “a flowering stick,” she said.
•’Ruby Eclipse’ is also known as ‘Strawberry Blonde’ in some catalogs. It’s a bi-color with colors ranging from red to pink and yellow to cream.
•’Sundown’ isn’t new, but it was previously exclusive to Ball Seed, making it unavailable to small growers. It’s a single-stemmed variety, similar to ‘Sunbright’ but with red and gold flowers.
•’Premier Light Yellow’ is the new name for ‘Extra Early Cream Yellow’ mentioned in the October issue of Growing for Market. It is the earliest sunflower variety yet, flowering six to seven weeks after sowing. (In trials in North Carolina last year, it flowered two to three weeks after transplanting.)

Two airy filler flowers
A new flower that you must try is Linaria ‘Lace’. The flowers look like tiny snapdragon florets on stiff upright spikes, with 12 to 16 stems per plant. It needs to be grown in cool weather, so order your seeds now. Linaria makes a great filler for wedding work and comes in lavender, white, rose and yellow or a mix.
Another new filler is bi-color Cloud larkspur from Cook’s Garden Seeds. It has dark blue flowers with white spurs and is otherwise identical to the other Cloud larkspurs. I have found that fall-planting this type of larkspur makes for huge plants with tangly branches. The flowers are much smaller and more useable when seeded or transplanted in late winter.