And the Plant of the Year winners are ...

Thirty-six years ago, the Perennial Plant Association’s members voted on one plant that they would declare the Plant of the Year. The program’s goal was to bring attention to a worthy plant among gardeners and plant industry professionals.

The program has been so successful that not only do PPA members continue to choose a featured plant each year, but other companies and organizations have borrowed the idea, choosing their own plants of the year. 

The goal, of course, is marketing, but the benefit to gardeners is that featured plants are usually easier to learn about and find at local garden centers, which are clued into the “winning” plants far enough in advance to make sure they have adequate stock.

Here are some of the Plants of the Year you’re likely to see more and hear more of in 2026.

The American Hosta Society actually goes out of its way to say that its Hosta of the Year is not a marketing program but is meant to help guide gardeners to excellent varieties and is based on garden performance, and this year’s featured hosta is a classic. ‘Halcyon’ is a mounding variety that can grow to 2 feet tall by nearly 4 feet wide with frosty blue foliage with pointed leaf tips. The blue color is long lasting and the  thick leaves offer good resistance from slug damage.

Rather than choose specific plants, the National Garden Bureau featured plant categories, and this year its vegetable pick is hot peppers. The group offers tips for growing plants in its featured categories, and in the case of peppers, fun facts including that the world’s hottest pepper,’Pepper X,’ is a whopping 2,693,000 Scoville units.

Plant brand Proven Winners anoints plants of the year in no fewer than 14 categories. Among the winners are South African phlox (Jamesbrittenia) Safari Dusk, a charming, heat-tolerant plant that is similar to Bacopa but lasts all summer, and a beautiful chocolate brown Astilbe ‘Dark Side of the Moon,’ which has striking violet flowers.

The small Spirea Double Play Dolly, with chartreuse foliage that emerges orange and bright purple is the company’s Flowering Shrub of the Year. Its Rose of the Year is the mini climber Rise Up Lilac Days, which has good cold tolerance and excellent disease resistance along with interesting lilac-blue flowers that occasionally lean pink. It’s one of few roses that has been an excellent performer in my garden.

And the PPA’s Plant of the Year is the big bluestem (Andropogon gerardii) ‘Blackhawks,’ a stately upright ornamental grass with dark green to purple foliage that grows to 5 feet tall by 2 feet wide. This variety was a seedling of another big bluestem, ‘Red October,’ that was introduced by Illinois plant breeder Brent Horvath.

Regardless of the intent of Plant of the Year programs, they highlight and provide better access to worthy varieties that gardeners may have otherwise overlooked.