The ‘Hopeful Consumer’s Accidental Neglect Trial Garden’ Report

Photo © Joe Szurszewski Photography

I have seen a bunch of trial gardens in my editorial travels this year, and I’ve loved them all. So, this month, I’m excited to offer you the first part of our two-part 2024 Trials Report, looking into the best-performing plants from the top trial gardens in the United States.

But there is another trial garden I’ve experienced this year with a dubious reputation. Tucked away in the suburbs of Cleveland, Ohio, in the unkempt beds right outside my front door, it’s planted with a mix of perennials, annuals and veggies.

These plants arrive at my office at GIE Media headquarters in the spring, fresh and healthy and positively humming with potential. When I unwrap the carefully bred gems, they practically beg to be placed in the nurturing soil of a thoughtful gardener’s carefully cultivated patch.

Sadly, that is not their fate.

I call my garden the Hopeful Consumer’s Accidental Neglect Trial Garden (or HoCAN for short). Like many suburban gardens, the HoCAN is managed by two people who yearn for beautiful flower and veg beds but are too overwhelmed by the realities of full-time work, childcare and social responsibilities to give the plants their deserved care — hence, the accidental neglect.

The truth is that the anxiety of caring for the garden remains at a fever pitch throughout the season. Long bouts of guilty avoidance are often punctuated by random weekends of intense weeding, watering and occasional new flower plantings apparently meant to shame the already neglected plants into getting their crap together already.

The HoCAN motto is: Throw it in the dirt, water it when you remember to and hope for the best.

Which is to say that our methodology is in sync with consumers who like to strut into the garden center with a crispy brown nest of leaves and twigs and complain about their calibrachoa only blooming once.

However, I can confidently say that the HoCAN saw some standouts this year. The following report is purposefully anonymized to avoid allegations of favoritism. Every plant sample sent gratis (perhaps foolishly) to the HoCAN does not necessarily recive the recommended care it deserves, nor are they grown in ideal conditions. We are optimistic yet equal-adversity gardeners. Here are 2024’s top survivors:

Best overall performer: A certain new double helianthus had a slow start in spring but knocked it out of the park with consistent bright blooms all season, despite being regularly parched and baked in southern sun beside a blacktop driveway.

Best veg: Some Thai peppers from a storied veggie brand thrived in an untried bed on the east side of the house where the “liberated-not-stolen-exactly” hydrangeas refuse to bloom. Their bright red bundles give me joy, as does watching my 11-year-old eat them and drink a half-gallon of milk, despite my vigorous caution.

Best in a rando stoop planter: A gorgeous fuchsia-eyed petunia with dark veins from a popular petunia brand offered fascinating front door color all season, despite being bullied by assorted rival flowers and homeowners’ insistence they would deadhead “over their dead body.”

The HoCAN Trial Garden is always accepting samples and is happy to report on performance (as well as details of the level of neglect a plant receives) to anyone submitting plants.