Featured Five 2025: Favorites from Mast Young Plants Trial Garden
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EmailAre you seeking proven performers for the season ahead? Check out Part 3 of our series highlighting top picks from the 2025 Michigan Garden Plant Tour trial sites.
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.
Part 1 and Part 2 of this series covered our favorites at the trial gardens at DGI Propagators and Four Star Greenhouses. This article will feature plants with excellent garden performance from Mast Young Plants.
Featured Five from Mast Young Plants
The 2025 trial garden featured more than 1,500 varieties in raised landscape beds, hanging baskets, deco pots, saddle planters, window planters and 500 unique, custom-designed combination planters (Photos 1-2). Among the trialed varieties there were expanded fertilizer trials, an irrigation trial, and plantings of former All-American Selections winners. With so many amazing varieties and combinations, choosing just five was very challenging and came down to our personal preference in colors and species. There were some that stood out to while walking through the gardens this year:
- Dipladenia Sun Parasol ‘Fired Up Orange’ – Suntory Flowers
- Petunia Surfina ‘Heavenly Cashmere Pink’ – Suntory Flowers
- Portulaca RioGrande ‘Raspberry Lemonade’ – Ball FloraPlant
- Begonia Hybrid iCandy ‘Sunset’ – Syngenta Flowers
- Petunia MixMaster ‘Before You Know It 26’ – Ball FloraPlant
- Petunia CannonBall ‘Coral’
- Petunia CannonBall ‘Pink’
- Petunia CannonBall ‘Yellow’
Dipladenia Sun Parasol ‘Fired Up Orange’
New from Suntory Flowers, Fired Up Orange joins the Sun Parasol series with bold, fiery flowers. This Dipladenia is completely upright and is known for heat tolerance. Its bright flowers, dark green foliage and pollinator-friendly characteristics will pop in homeowner’s containers.
Petunia Surfina ‘Heavenly Cashmere Pink’
This deep sugar pink petunia is a new addition to the Heavenly series from Suntory Flowers. It is known to be a continuous bloomer and rain, wind and heat tolerant. The stunning pink flowers and mounding habit were impressive.
Portulaca RioGrande ‘Raspberry Lemonade’
Portulaca RioGrande Raspberry Lemonade had large, bright pink and bright yellow flowers. It is a new variety and has a nice trailing habit that would be excellent in a basket. Portulaca are known to be a very heat tolerant choice for homeowners.
Begonia Hybrid iCandy ‘Sunset’
In the shade containers, Begonia iCandy Sunset stood out with very large orange to yellow flowers with dark foliage. The distinctive color variation between the flowers and the foliage was notable and made the flowers stand out even more. On the day we visited the trials, it earned our “favorite shade variety” vote as well as a couple of other people’s as denoted by the blue flags.
Combos MixMaster ‘Before You Know It 26’
Another notable favorite was the combination MixMaster from Ball FloraPlant. Before You Known It 26 was a vibrant mix of the CannonBall coral, yellow and pink petunias. This trio is supposed to be stuck together as unrooted liners to create the mass multicolored effect. The combination was showy and a mixture of our personal favorite colors.
In addition to these five favorites, there were others that caught our eye: Angelonia MixMaster ‘Patriotic Heart’ (Ball FloraPlant), Coleus ChargedUp ‘Campfire’ (Ball FloraPlant), Diascia Trinity ‘Pink’ (Danziger), Portulaca Mega Pazzaz ‘Red’ (Danziger) and Angelonia Guardian Angel ‘Pink’ (Ball FloraPlant).
