Supertunias®

What more needs to be said about Petunias? Haven’t we all known these flowering annuals since childhood? Perhaps. But the Supertunia® is a different story—one worth sharing.

Petunias with their colorful blooms have long been “go-to” plants for hanging baskets, window boxes, and other container displays. And landscape gardeners love to use Petunias to add color to sunny garden beds. But some—not all, but some—of the Petunias I have used in the past faced challenges. For example:

• Powdery mildew would begin to cover strong plants and weaken them to the point of causing them not to flower; and
• Spent blooms would turn brown and crisp or, worse yet, hang on, brown and soggy. They’d laminate themselves to foliage and nearby blooms, spoiling the look of otherwise pretty plants.

With Proven Winners’® introduction of the Supertunia®, I for one worried less about these potential problems. And the lack of worry was warranted.

Though I am not typically drawn to labels and logos, I do like to know when a plant has been bred by Proven Winners® because I know that the plant has undergone plant trials and has been bred to be as disease- and pest-resistant as possible. In the case of flowering plants, breeding has also focused on the size, vibrancy, and continuity of blooms… in other words, the overall vitality of the plant. So as a Proven Winners® offering, Supertunia® plants have a lot going for them, and thus, their labeled containers do draw me in.

Supertunia® plants promise lush growth (mounding or spreading/trailing, depending on which ones you select), good overall plant health, vibrant and continuous blooms from spring through fall, and a self-cleaning nature. That last point is important to me… no more deadheading and no more soggy vestiges of past blooms to peel off the foliage. Count me in for that. And I find that with a Supertunia®, pinching to keep the plant from getting leggy is not necessary, although gardeners sometimes find it wise to trim the plants back in mid-summer to promote new growth. Easy though… easy care.

Many gardeners are fond of the Supertunia® Vista series, boasting an ability to fill vistas—full views of the landscape—with great color. With creative names to describe their different colors—example, Vista Bubblegum®—these well-known, rather traditional garden mainstays (Petunias) got more exciting, more fun. Supertunia® Vista Jazzberry® is a new example of a great naming strategy, and an even better breeding strategy. Good old (well, new) Jazzberry® is an exciting magenta, and like Bubblegum®, ‘Persimmon’, and other mouth-watering (but, no, don’t eat these) colors, it shows up… it is visible. Plant your favorite of these at the start of your driveway, and they will be seen from the street. Plant them in a mound in the distant part of your garden, and you will see them from a window.

Rather than getting leggy stems with little foliage and few blooms, which is sometimes the case with some other Petunias, the Supertunia® Vista plants cover ground with strong foliage, but foliage that can hardly be seen because the flower cover is so significant. Other Supertunia® plants include Minis, with smaller blooms for those who want a different look. Then there are the new trailing ‘Pink Tiara’ and ‘Blue Tiara’ plants which have been bred for what Proven Winners® describes as a “luminescent glow” that will light up any basket, window box, or landscape. 

I still find myself very happy to purchase trays of other Petunias—no white container, no Proven Winners® logo—in other words, not Supertunia® plants. I often have great luck with these “others”; I sometimes don’t. I know I will have to deadhead many of these plants, pinching them back regularly if I want to keep them blooming. I also know that I may need to keep my focus on humidity, not allowing powdery mildew to wreak havoc on these other Petunias. But with Supertunia® plants, my focus stays more on simply enjoying what the flouncy petals offer. When dry, the petals ripple in the wind, waving their color like a flag that notes that summer is in full gear. I can achieve a colorful blanket in a garden bed—so colorful, it rivals the color created by Creeping Phlox, one of my favorite plants. But Supertunia® plants bloom from spring through fall… a three-season blanket.

Like most flowering annuals, Supertunia® plants and other Petunias thrive when fed with controlled-release fertilizer. They appreciate even moisture but no soggy roots, and personally, I like to ensure they are watered from the base by way of soaker hoses or, in the case of baskets, careful hand-watering. Getting their delicate and very large petals too wet harms the look of the plants. And more important than perhaps anything: Ensure they can take in the sun for a good part of each day.

Petunias may be familiar, but the Supertunia® is not the Petunia your grandmother knew. And wouldn’t she’d love it?!