ADRIAN — Happy New Year! It’s early in the year, but never too early to start planning for spring.
Are you in the market for new plants or an update to your garden? Now is the time to begin thinking about refreshing and updating your perennial beds. The magazines are beginning to come out full of pictures of new varieties. It’s almost like a toy catalog for gardeners!
I want to bring to your attention some of the new perennial plants for 2026. There are also many new things in seeds, but this article concentrates on plants that weather our Minnesota winters. Remember we are a questionable zone 5a (that concerns me somewhat), but definitely a zone 4 and lower. So be sure to take that into consideration when looking at plants, especially at big box stores. They can get in plants for a lot of different hardiness zones.
The Perennial Plant Association chose Andropogon gerardii ‘Blackhawks’ as the 2026 perennial plant of the year. This a variety of a native Bluestem grass that has dark foliage and gets darker as the seasons change. By fall it’s almost black — thus the name. It will be available from numerous online/catalog companies and will be found at some nurseries in our area.
From Monrovia you should expect to find a couple of new Hydrangeas that are zone 5 plants. ‘Seaside Serenade Hanalei Bay’ Hydrangea (zone 5-9) grows 3 feet tall and wide and has dark foliage with big mopheads of deep magenta flowers with green to white centers that bloom repeatedly throughout the summer. ‘Centennial Ruby’ is another new variety of hydrangea. It is a zone 4-9 plant that also grows 3 feet tall and wide with ruby red mopheads that can almost take on black hues as they age. Both of these plants do better in filtered sunlight to shade.
Monrovia also has new varieties available in a smaller Potentilla, ‘Pink N’ Pretty’, an exceptional pollinator in ‘Honey Blush’ Rose and ‘Scent First Orange Sparkler’ Dianthus.
Walters Gardens, a premier grower for Proven Winters together with Proven Winners offers quite a few new plants for 2026. For shade gardens, ‘Hope Springs Eternal” Hosta grows about 2 feet tall and 3 1/2 to 4 feet wide with white-edged blue leaves. Shadowland ‘Chance Encounter’ Hosta grows 12 to 16 inches tall and 3 to 4 feet wide with powdery blue leaves with a wide gold margin and white flowers.
“Dark Side of the Moon” Astilbe offers rich, deep chocolate brown leaves and raspberry buds that open to rosy purple flowers. Two new Coral Bells are available — Dolce ‘Glazed and Infused’ Heuchera has large, silver leaves with charcoal black veins and thrive in sun or shade, and Dolce ‘Sultry Night’ Heuchera, which is also sun to shade, sports black foliage with purple overlay.
For the sun garden, PW has a new Baptisia (False Indigo) Decadence “Lemon Meringue” that grows 3 feet tall and wide in full sun. Its foliage is blue with yellow flowers. Another plant of interest is a hardy Hibiscus Summerific ‘Garnet Globes’ which showcases a dark garnet 7-inch flower and broad deep green leaves. This plant grows 3 to 3 1/2 feet tall and 3 1/2 feet wide.
A couple of new varieties of Nepeta (Catmint), ‘Catwalk Queen” and ‘Lemon Purrfection’ sport purple flowers with the latter having golden yellow leaves. Always show worthy are two new colors of Coneflowers (Echinacea), Color Coded ‘Knock ‘em Red’ and Double Coded ‘Coral Cranberry’. These plants bloom midsummer into fall and love the full sun.
A new Switch Grass (Panicum), Prairie Winds ‘October Sky’ as well as ‘Treasure Trove’ Rudbeckia, along with a few other ground covers round out the new varieties for 2026.
Be sure to check out these new offerings along with all of the new annual flower varieties that will be available in a couple of months. Some of these new varieties will sell out fast. Summer will be here before we know it!
As always if you have any questions, you can reach a Master Gardener by filling out an Ask a Master Gardener form at extension.umn.edu/master-gardener/ask. We try to get back to you within a couple of days.
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