GROW ONE BETTER At UMaine trial gardens, they’re always looking to…

Trial and error is OK – sometimes. Nobody’s going to die if your new chili recipe doesn’t taste so great. If your self-taught guitar riffs aren’t quite up to Jimi Hendrix standards, it’s no biggie. And who will notice if you skip the salon and do your own nails?

But other times, you just don’t want to be the guinea pig. Like when you’re buying a just-introduced car. Or when a new hairstylist comes to town. Or when a fancy, pricey restaurant opens up on your block. The results could be ugly, or worse, expensive.

In situations like these, it would help to have someone like Lois Berg Stack around. She’s the driving force behind the University of Maine Cooperative Extension’s field trials and All-America Selections display garden at Rogers Farm. In other words, she grows new plant varieties to show how well they perform in northern New England – saving home gardeners and greenhouse owners time, headaches and money.

“We’re just looking at field performance … we have, relative to other places in the country, a short, cool growing season,” Stack, an ornamental horticulture specialist, said recently in her Orono office. “Not all [plants] will do well in every place.”

The arrival of spring – and this weekend’s Bangor Garden Show – has many gardeners in eastern Maine itching to dig in the dirt. They may have to wait for the ground to thaw, but it’s not too early to make a wish list of new flowers and vegetables to try this year.

But the selection of seeds and seedlings in catalogs and local stores can quickly become overwhelming. Enter ornamental horticulture specialists such as Stack, who plant display gardens so green thumbs can see if the Zesty Lemon zinnia is worth growing, or how the petunia Easy Wave Coral Reef stacks up to the 500 other petunias on the market.

“A person can read a national publication or a gardening magazine, but being able to have a display garden nearby that you can visit several times a summer to see how different plants perform, I think that’s invaluable,” Stack said.

At the University of Maine’s Rogers Farm, located in Stillwater, Stack conducts independent field trials of annuals for a variety of plant companies, such as Proven Winners, Proven Selections, Ball FloraPlant, Ball Seed and PanAmerican Seed. Since 1988, she also has maintained the state’s only display garden for All-America Selections. Johnny’s Selected Seeds in Albion is the state’s only trial site for AAS.

To earn AAS status, a new flower or vegetable variety is first grown and tested by a panel of independent, unpaid judges – including Johnny’s.

“As you garden and you look in seed catalogs, you learn things over time,” Stack said. “You learn that an AAS winner has been judged by a few dozen independent judges who have been doing this for years. If it’s an AAS winner, it’s usually a good bet.”

Judges score each cultivar on such factors as earliness to bloom or harvest, disease or pest tolerance, novel color or flavor, yield, length of flowering or harvest, and overall performance. Each fall, the judges report their scores, which are tallied by an independent accounting firm. Only the best of the best make the cut.

Stack and her crew grow AAS winners from the current year and the previous five years. This shows how weather fluctuations and climate in general affect the plants. For her field trials, which differ from the AAS garden, Stack rates new introductions and makes note of the stellar performers.

“Some are new but not necessarily unreleased – some are in their first year,” Stack explained. “I try to help industry people and home gardeners figure out what’s new and what might perform well in their garden next year.”

In her notes from 2006, she calls the Cyperus ‘King Tut’ “a unique plant for large container,” while the Zinnia ‘Zesty’ Series from Ball Seed are “fabulous” with no powdery mildew or leaf spot. Lantana ‘Citrus Blend’ got a “WOW!” in Stack’s trial, despite the fact that lantanas don’t normally fare well in Maine’s climate. For a list of Stack’s top 10 new plants for this season, see the sidebar on S1.

Many of the plants Stack tests are meant for container gardening, which has steadily gained popularity since the early 1990s. Others are used as bedding plants or in the vegetable garden. The gardens are open to the public all summer long, but during special field days, gardeners are there to answer questions about new varieties.

“Field trials are helpful to homeowners, who come through, take notes and know what to ask for at their garden center,” Stack said. “They’re also beneficial for greenhouse owners to come through, see what performs well and know what to order for their plants.

The results of her trials often help plant sales representatives recommend cultivars to greenhouse owners. And garden centers often use Stack’s results to decide what to buy for the coming season – and, perhaps more important, what to skip.

“We’re Zone 5b here – but a lot of times, our customers aren’t necessarily on the coast,” said Gail Sprague, greenhouse manager at Boothbay Region Greenhouse in Boothbay Harbor. “This gives us a sense of what’s tried and true in Maine.”

Sprague says that home gardeners often travel to garden shows and botanical gardens for inspiration, while the best option may be right in their back yard.

“The trial gardens are really more of a scientific option for them to look at,” Sprague said. “I think it’s overlooked and people should take advantage of it.”

For Stack, the gardens are both a vocation and a labor of love. She loves seeing the improvements that breeders have made over the years – and the trends that have developed. She also appreciates the way home gardeners have become smart, savvy consumers.

In the immediate future, she predicts containers will continue to stay popular, but gardeners will begin experimenting with more sophisticated, unexpected plant combinations and adapting them to their own lifestyles. For example, an avid cook may have a potted geranium by the kitchen door, but maybe she’ll tuck in a few herbs so she won’t have to walk a long distance to get them.

Stack also sees a return to heirloom vegetables and old-fashioned annuals, coupled with a strong demand for new varieties – and planted side by side. And whimsy is the order of the day – from using boots or an L.L. Bean bag as a container, to creative hardscaping such as handmade stepping stones imprinted with leaves.

“You see trends,” Stack said. “You see new things coming along, not just little popular things but these truly great improvements that are coming along. … These are the fun things to watch.”

For information on new plant varieties or the University of Maine’s trial and display gardens, contact Lois Stack at lstack@umext.maine.edu or call 581-2949. For information on All-America Selections, visit www.all-americaselections.org.