Have you noticed how many awards and prizes people give to each other? Grammys, Oscars, CMAs, Golden Globes, People’s Choice, Nobel Prizes, Pulitzer Prizes and the list goes on. We also give prizes to plants. Here are some of the award designations I found in just one seed catalog, and what the award means.
• AARS. All-American Rose Selection. Tests are conducted over two years in ten test gardens nationwide. Roses are given the care an average homeowner would give and they are judged on disease resistance, flower production, color and fragrance.
• AAS. All-America Selections. AAS is a non-profit organization with judges that grow new plant cultivars at test gardens throughout the country. Categories include flowers, vegetables, bedding plants, and cool season bedding plants. Judges look for significantly improved qualities such as earliness to bloom or harvest, disease and pest tolerance, novel colors or flavors, novel flower forms, total yield, length of flowering or harvest and overall performance.
• American Garden Award. This is a “fan-voted” award. New flower varieties chosen by breeders for their excellent garden performance are planted at various public gardens and the public is invited to vote on their favorite. Three are chosen as winners.
• APS Gold Medal Winner. The American Peony Society Board of Directors chooses the winner at their annual meeting. Beauty, availability, dependable performance, the absence of the need for mechanical support, good plant habit, good foliage throughout the growing season and price are considered.
• Fleuroselect Gold Medal, Fleuroselect Quality and Fleuro Star. Fleuroselect is the international organization for the ornamental plants industry. Its main activities include the testing, protecting and promoting of new flower varieties. They conduct field and greenhouse trials of new varieties on 30 private trial grounds in Europe. Through these trials, the newness, practical use, quality and exclusivity of the entries are determined.
• Hosta of the Year. The American Hosta Growers Association awards this designation to a hosta that is a good garden plant in all a regions of the country, is widely available and in sufficient supply and retails for about $15.00 in the year of selection.
• Perennial of the Year. The Perennial Plant Association designates this award based on a plant’s suitability for a wide range of growing climates, low maintenance requirements, multiple-season interest, and being relatively pest/disease-free.
• Herb of the Year. An herb is chosen by the International Herb Association and must be outstanding in at least two of these three categories: culinary, medicinal, or ornamental.
Two other important designations you’ll notice in seed catalogs are not awards. The first is the green and white USDA organic symbol, which means that seeds or plants are produced without use of synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, sewage sludge or genetic modification. The other is the OMRI symbol, which denotes that a product is approved for use in organic gardening according to the U.S. National Organic Standards by the Organic Materials Review Institute.
Leave a Reply