Breeding initiatives at Must Have Perennials

on-the-road — Kris Smith, marketing manager at Must Have Perennials, holds one of the new introductions from the Rockies Helleborus series, Mount Nebo. This plant won The Garden Center Group’s Retailers’ Choice Awards at Cultivate’24. Mount Nebo has new foliage that emerges bright red in the fall and early spring maturing to pink, white and green speckled leaves. Every year it should come back red and fade to green.
Photos by Katie McDaniel

Published October 24, 2024

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At the end of July, I had the opportunity to visit Must Have Perennials in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. It is an organization that represents and supports breeders and focuses almost exclusively on perennials with excellent hardiness and garden performance.

“We work with breeders around the world to bring new genetics to the market, and that’s very exciting for us because we get to bring the cool plants to the industry,” says Kris Smith, marketing manager at Must Have Perennials. “We have a love for the plants and getting more awareness out about the plants — what are they doing, what’s coming, what’s new — that’s what everyone really wants to know.”

The team at Must Have Perennials puts all the plant introductions through rigorous garden performance and growing trials, and the perennial flowers are also trialed at universities and botanic gardens to learn about the plants’ regional performance. The Rockies Helleborus series went through a trial period for two to three years, and once the series passed that test, they got patented and pushed out to the supply chain.