Featured Five 2025: Favorites from Pell Greenhouses

Heidi Lindberg<wollaege@msu.edu> and Caitlin Splawski<splawski@msu.edu>, Michigan State University Extension - August 29, 2025

Are you seeking proven performers for the season ahead? Check out Part 5 of our series highlighting top picks from the 2025 Michigan Garden Plant Tour trial sites.

Trial garden with rows of large black containers filled with colorful flowering plants, including pink, white, yellow, orange, and purple varieties, arranged on black ground covering. — Photo 1. Plant trials at Pell Greenhouses in 2025. Photo by Heidi Lindberg, MSU Extension.

Every year, Michigan State University and Michigan’s leading young plant producers host a free open house at their trial sites and display gardens for growers, landscapers and retail operators to learn about a wide range of ornamental crops. Industry professionals can see for themselves which new varieties perform the best under various conditions, including in the ground and in containers. The tour lasts for two weeks and was held this year from July 28-Aug. 8, 2025.

This year, there were seven trial gardens at different locations throughout central lower Michigan: DGI Propagators, Four Star Greenhouses, Mast Young Plants, Michigan State University (MSU) Trial Garden, Pell Greenhouses, Raker-Roberta’s Young Plants and Walter’s Gardens.

If you couldn’t make it out to every trial site, you’re in luck! Heidi Lindberg and Caitlin Splawski, Michigan State University Extension educators, traveled to each site, picking favorites and snapping photos along the way. We’ll cover our favorites from each trial site in this article series.

Parts 1, 2, 3 and 4 of this series cover Michigan State University Extension’s favorites at trial gardens at DGI Propagators, Four Star Greenhouses, Mast Young Plants and MSU. Part 5 will feature plants with outstanding performance at Pell Greenhouse’s trial gardens.

Featured Five at Pell Greenhouses

The Pell Greenhouse’s trial garden (Photo 1) includes a large hanging basket structure, fence plantings and containers placed in both sun and shade. This year also included an employee competition of combination planters. The top varieties that caught my eye were all sun plants, two of which are “spillers” for combination containers:

Osteospermum Besties ‘Trusty Amethyst’ – Danziger
Coreopsis Reina ‘Single Giant Gold’ – Greenfuse
Portulaca MegaPazzaz ‘Red’ – Danziger
Alternanthera ‘Choco Chili’ – Westhoff
Ipomea Sweet Georgia ‘Pulse Black’ – Greenfuse

Osteospermum Besties ‘Trusty Amethyst’

Trusty Amethyst caught our eye with its large, white to purple flowers and compact habit. It is a new release for Danziger for 2026 and joins six other colors in the Besties series of Osteospermum. This series provides color all season long as African daisy, Osteospermum, are tolerant of both heat and cold.

Coreopsis Reina ‘Single Giant Gold’

Container of Coreopsis with abundant bright yellow daisy-like flowers in full bloom, set among other flowering plants in a trial display. — Photo 4. *Coreopsis* Reina Single Giant Gold. Photo by Heidi Lindberg, MSU Extension.

Single Giant Gold Coreopsis was a new vegetative coreopsis released for the 2022-2023 season, but is new to the catalog for Pell Greenhouses for 2026. It had large, sunny yellow flowers and is hardy to zone 5. It is daylength neutral and matures at 12 to 15 inches tall. For gardeners looking to attract pollinators while deterring deer and rabbits, this Coreopsis should fit the bill.

Portulaca MegaPazzaz ‘Red’

Portulaca Mega Pazzaz Red boasts prolific large, red flowers on foliage with a semi-trailing habit. This variety was new in 2023 but really stood out at the Pell trial gardens this season. It provides an excellent heat and drought-tolerant option for planters or hanging baskets without sacrificing the flower power.

Alternanthera ‘Choco Chili’

A part of the FanciFillers series from Westhoff, Alternanthera Choco Chili is not a new variety to the industry but had interesting multidimensional color. It created a thick mat and the dark foliage would bring out other plants in a combination container. It ranked “one of the best” in the Penn State variety trial during 2020.

Ipomea Sweet Georgia ‘Pulse Black’

Large container of Ipomoea ‘Sweet Georgia Pulse Black’ with dense, dark purple foliage, displayed outdoors with other ornamental plants in the background. — Photo 8. *Ipomea* Sweet Georgia Pulse Black. Photo by Heidi Lindberg, MSU Extension.

Another ‘spiller’ that stood out was the sweet potato vine Pulse Black because of its heavy leaf venation and unusual leaf shape. This variety’s dark foliage would also create a pop of color for other varieties planted in combination with it. It looked great next to the chartreuse sweet potato vines and coleus adjacent to it.

For more top 2025 varieties, check out the other articles in our series:

This article was published by Michigan State University Extension. For more information, visit https://extension.msu.edu. To have a digest of information delivered straight to your email inbox, visit https://extension.msu.edu/newsletters. To contact an expert in your area, visit https://extension.msu.edu/experts, or call 888-MSUE4MI (888-678-3464).