A recent bloomer in my brug house was this seedling from a cross I made between Brugmansia White Cloud x Pink Smitty.While the blooms may not be super special, they are thick textured and long lasting.  Right now they are a soft pink color so we'll have to wait a few months to see if the color deepens in warm weather.This one will most likely be placed in my farmers market group.  That group contains plants that are too nice to compost.  I may sell those at a couple of farmers markets or ...

A few weeks ago I started my second greenhouse project for Sommer Gardens, a new hoop house.  This project followed the completion of a large shade house friends and I constructed during the holidays. While I really wanted to build a nice greenhouse with a heater and fans, finances dictated I switch to a less expensive hoop house kit.The kit arrived on a 16 foot pallet, three quarters of a ton of tightly bound galvanized steel pipe ready to be assembled. Its new home was going to be an open ...

Check out this cool bloom on a new Angel Trumpet seedling from cross involving Brugmansia Bergzauber x Color Point.The long corolla teeth and soft orange color give the bloom an appearance of a flame.I like the looks of this one and plan to carry it forward in my watch zone this year.  I've already incorporated it into my spring breeding program both as pod parent and a pollen parent.

I'm a big fan of wild corolla teeth.  When I spot a new Angel Trumpet seedling with long and crazy teeth, it almost always ends up in my watch zone.  Here is one I've been watching for the past year.  It's corkscrew tipped corolla teeth continue to grab my attention.This seedling is the outcome of an unknown cross with Brugmansia Rubirosa as the pod parent.  The long lasting blooms have remained snow white in all seasons, which is a plus.  Often blooms on a new seedling will slowly change ...

A recent bloomer in my Angel Trumpet forest was this seedling from a cross made between Brugmansia Miss B Haven x Daydreams.  The blooms are giant in size and the one pictured above was at least 10 inches across.  The one shown below was equally as wide with a length to match. The plant is also on the larger size and this seedling easily reached 8 feet tall before blooming for the first time.  I plan to cross this one back to several other large flowered cultivars I have to see if I can ...

When you make an Angel Trumpet cross with two classic ladies, you can usually count on some of the offspring being watchers. Here's one seedling from the cross I made between Brugmansia Painted Lady x New Orleans Lady that I feel is worth watching for a few more seasons.Most pf the blooms on this seedling have had the bloom form pictured above.  Sometimes it will produce a bloom that strongly resembles its father, New Orleans Lady, as you can see below.Although my sense of smell is not that ...

We were doing some cleaning in our office and I came across this vintage areal photograph of Sommer Gardens circa 1984.  This photo shows my retail garden center on US hwy 27 just north of Clermont.Note the results of the devastating back to back record breaking freezes in the early eighties. Those freezes killed off thousands of acres of citrus in Central Florida, forever changing the landscape of Florida.The building pictured is the old railroad depot that used to sit in downtown ...

This Angel Trumpet seedling has just earned a spot on my keeper list.  It is from a cross I made between Brugmansia Naughty Nick x Cleopatra.The blooms sort of have a flying nun look to me that is sort of cool when the plant is loaded with blooms.  The creamy white blooms are very thick textured and average 3-4 inches across. During cool weather they pick-up a slight apricot color as they age.The plant growth has been vigorous, but not quite as crazy as its mother, Brugmansia Naughty Nick. ...