Proven Winners ColorChoice Now Offering Ornamental Trees
May 13, 2019 
The Proven Winners ColorChoice ornamental trees program is geared toward garden centers, homeowners, and residential landscapers.
Spring Meadow Nursery, the manager of Proven Winners ColorChoice flowering shrubs, has announced it will be adding ornamental trees to its woody plants portfolio in the 2019 growing season.
The new Proven Winners ColorChoice ornamental tree program will begin with six selections that fit the Proven Winners standards of beauty and performance. Chosen for their landscape worthiness, the varieties were selected for good scale, form, and multi-season interest. The new ornamental tree program is geared toward garden centers, homeowners, and residential landscapers.
Ornamental fruit-bearing selections include dwarf, disease-resistant Lollipop crabapples (Malus) with a tight, compact head, prolific white flowers and tiny, red fruit, and Show Time crabapples (Malus), with florescent fuchsia-red flowers and red fruit. The program will also feature two outstanding flowering cherry cultivars: Prunus ‘Pink Snow Showers,’ a vigorous grower with clean, pink flowers and dark-green leaves, and Prunus ‘Weeping Extraordinaire,’ which features extra-large, double, light-pink, fluffy blooms.
Also joining the list of Proven Winners ColorChoice ornamental trees will be ‘Avalanche,’ an Asian birch (Betula ×) with proven borer resistance. It has tan and pink young bark maturing to exfoliating white and dark-green foliage that turns bright yellow in the fall. ‘Golden Shadows’ pagoda dogwood (Cornus alternifolia), is a small native tree with vibrant variegated foliage, white spring flowers and red-orange new growth. ‘Crusader’ hawthorn (Crataegus crus-galli) is a thornless, disease resistant, rugged urban street tree with multi-season interest including spring flowers, colorful fall foliage, and bright-red fruit.
Spring Meadow is partnering with the horticulture firm UpShoot, owned and run by long-time industry professional Maria Zampini. The former President of Lake County Nursery Inc. and her family’s retail garden center, Champion Garden Towne, Zampini grew up in the tree business and learned from her late father Jim Zampini, who spent a lifetime breeding, selecting, and introducing trees.
“Maria Zampini is the perfect person to organize and run the Proven Winners tree program,” says Spring Meadow General Manager Jeremy Deppe. “She knows what makes a great tree and understands the supply chain. Our Proven Winners growers and retailers have been asking for trees, but we wanted to do it right.”
“We will continue to grow a wide selection of varieties that offer different color, habit, features, seasonality, and adaptability to different sites, all that are worthy of the Proven Winners brand,” Zampini says. “Proven Winners already has a great network of growers, but any tree grower can participate by purchasing liners. We are working with some excellent bareroot liner producers and propagators.”
Growers, propagators, and retailers interested in offering Proven Winners ColorChoice trees can contact Zampini directly ([email protected]). Nurseries that are licensed to propagate and sell some or all of the varieties include Blue Heron Farm, Bountiful Farms, Hans Nelson & Sons Nursery Inc., John Holmlund Nursery, Robinson Nursery, J. Frank Schmidt & Son Co., Sester Farms, Inc., Spring Meadow Nursery, and Willoway Nurseries Inc., with more nurseries signing on this season.
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