Flower power today means colorful, low-maintenance blooming plants of all kinds that support a healthy environment and make our world ever more beautiful. Hybridizers are putting flowers powerfully to work.

"The whole world of breeding is more sophisticated" than it used to be, says Diane Blazek, executive director of All-America Selections and the National Garden Bureau, sister organizations that test new plants and promote top performers. Gardeners are looking for beautiful flowers they can rely on, but they also want to attract pollinators and conserve resources -- including time and energy. Modern hybridizers are hip, Blazek says.

New plants in garden shops and in the glossy pages of the latest plant and seed catalogs are hardy and adaptable. Annual flowers are heat- and drought-tolerant, and they produce lots of long-lasting flowers. Begonias introduced in the past few years have transformed consumers' experience with the genus, Blazek says. Large, colorful Viking begonias make big statements all by themselves in pots, and they hold their own with ease in flower beds. Lantanas aren't what they used to be, either. New sterile varieties produce lots of nectar for butterflies and other pollinators, but do not go to seed. Because the plants don't expend energy producing seeds, they bloom almost continuously through summer's heat, without pampering.

This year, the National Garden Bureau's "Year of" program, which promotes stellar garden performers, selected hydrangeas as their first featured shrub. "They're everywhere now, and they are better than ever," Blazek says. "They are longer-blooming (and) easy to care for, they have bigger flower heads, and they're great for sun or shade."

Interest in hydrangeas has skyrocketed in the past few years as hybridizers have introduced new mop-top varieties that bloom reliably even after the coldest winters. New introductions among the panicle hydrangeas, prized for their late-summer and fall flowers, bloom earlier than old-time varieties, and their cone-shaped flower clusters keep their form and freshness for weeks. Hybridizers have also increased the selection of native oak-leaf and smooth hydrangeas, and they've introduced compact varieties just right for small gardens or containers.

Among perennial flowers, such as coneflowers, black-eyed Susans and day lilies, hybridizers have put efforts into increased hardiness, reliability and flower production. These days, gardeners are looking for plants that are hardy even in places where winter temperatures may drop to -30 degrees Fahrenheit.

Russian sage Denim 'n Lace is a good example -- it's a sun-loving, drought-tolerant perennial hardy in bone-chilling Zone 4 winters, but equally at home in the mild winters of the south. The Perennial Plant Association's list of perennials of the year is a roll-call of such tough, colorful garden performers. Past winners include Millennium, a showy and floriferous summer-blooming allium; flashy, bright orange butterfly milkweed, which attracts butterflies and other pollinators; and the graceful fall-blooming anemone Honorine Jobert, which has snow-white flowers.

Interest in kitchen gardening is driving demand for hard-working flowers, too. Pollinators and other beneficial insects are "the heroes of the vegetable garden," says Lisa Mason Ziegler, a flower farmer in Newport News, Virginia, and the author of Vegetables Love Flowers. Zinnias, cosmos, sunflowers and other annual flowers, in particular, attract pollinators, which also visit the vegetable plants' blossoms. A row of flowers increases the garden's population of beneficial insects, which help control the bad bugs, Ziegler says. Planting annual and perennial flowers in and around a vegetable garden also improves the harvest.

Of all the flowers Ziegler grows on her flower farm, zinnias are perhaps the most popular both as pollinator plants and as cut flowers. Their voluptuous blooms are colorful landing pads for butterflies all summer long, and picking flowers for bouquets encourages even more flowers. Children love their bright colors, of course, but adults can't resist them, either. New hybrids broaden the appeal: These include zinnias with sophisticated bicolored blooms, festive stripes and designer colors, such as salmon, lime and champagne.

The benefits of modern hybrids aren't all reserved for the home gardener. Hybridizers also benefit when new introductions are more resistant to pests and diseases and thrive without pampering. These tough new plants help growers conserve energy and resources because they require less-intensive greenhouse management. To be sure, breeders and growers want gardeners to have show-stopping, colorful landscapes, but flower power has already kicked in long before you ever see a bloom.

SOURCES:

-- The National Garden Bureau (ngb.org) and All-America Selections (all-americaselections.org) are sister organizations that promote proven garden performers. This year, the National Garden Bureau's "Year of" program features lavender, lantana, hydrangea, iris and corn. All-America Selections tests new plants in trial gardens across the country and recognizes the best-performing selections every year. The program was established in 1933, and many AAS winners have become garden classics. The AAS winners for 2020 include a coneflower (Sombrero Baja Burgundy), nasturtium (Tip Top Rose) and rudbeckia (American Gold Rush), among others.

-- Since 1990, the Perennial Plant Association (perennialplant.org) has named an outstanding perennial as its plant of the year every year. Featured plants are versatile, adaptable and pest- and disease-resistant; they hold their own in the garden even when they're not blooming.

-- Vegetables Love Flowers, by Lisa Mason Ziegler (Cool Springs Press), promotes companion planting for beauty and productivity. Her book includes plans for kitchen gardens full of flowers to attract pollinators and beneficial insects, and to increase the yield of vegetable crops.

Take care of your plants, and you're taking care of the planet: There are lots ways to make a difference for the environment and keep a beautiful garden, too.

Landscape architect Pamela Conrad grew up on a farm in Missouri and took her love of nature and the outdoors out west, to a professional practice in San Francisco, where she puts environmentally smart landscaping ideas to work. Her climate-positive design initiative, launched for landscape architects and garden designers, was founded to help these professionals manage the carbon footprint of their projects. But the concepts she advocates apply just as well to our own backyards. Even a tiny garden can conserve precious resources.

Right off the bat, it's important to put certain assumptions aside. "People associate green with good, and that's not always the case when it comes to high-maintenance, high-resource landscapes," Conrad says. Typical lawns, pampered with frequent watering, pumped up with chemical fertilizers and maintained with gas-powered equipment, are actually carbon emitters, she says. In projects large and small, reducing the size of a lawn saves resources in many ways -- including reducing the amount of time and energy spent on its maintenance.

Homeowners "have lots of opportunities to make a difference in the way they design or maintain their landscapes," Conrad says. One easy way to support a healthier environment is to plant more trees, she suggests. Trees, especially deciduous trees, are environmental heroes that remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store it, which helps slow the warming of the earth's atmosphere. Conrad also recommends reducing the use of hard, impermeable paving, substituting with gravel or permeable paving, so rainwater can seep into the ground instead of running off into storm drainage systems. She suggests using compost or organic fertilizers instead of chemical fertilizers, and, in her projects, she specifies native plants wherever possible. Although her projects tend to be large in scale, these practices are all perfectly appropriate for home gardens, she says.

Conrad's toolkit for designers (on the Climate Positive Design website) lists dozens of tips and ideas for environmentally friendly landscape practices. If you're redesigning an existing landscape, you may be able to reuse existing pavers or bricks in a new design instead of sending old materials to a landfill, she says. She also advocates planting in layers -- with a canopy of trees, an understory of shrubs and groundcover perennials -- to give a garden dimension and character, to reduce runoff and to create habitats for birds, butterflies and other pollinators.

The positive results of these efforts are not just a matter of speculation. In case studies of design projects, Conrad discovered that making a few changes -- such as planting more trees and shrubs, reducing lawn area and using permeable paving instead of concrete -- made a significant difference in the projects' carbon footprints. The changes reduced the carbon footprint by 80 percent or more in some cases, and often shaved 20 years or more off the time required for a project to achieve the final goal of becoming carbon neutral.

By encouraging designers to make a few environmentally friendly design changes, "within the next 10 years, we could take more carbon dioxide out of the air than we are emitting," Conrad says. It's a lofty environmental goal for garden professionals, but it also pays off economically because environmentally sound landscapes cost less to maintain than designs with extensive lawns and plants that are not adapted to the site.

Regulations of emissions are already moving to the forefront of environmental policy in every region, but there's no reason to wait for regulations, Conrad says. "We have ways to take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere every day." Her pathfinder tool, and the projects she and colleagues are already working on, are designed to set an example right now, to help inspire change. Ecologically smart landscaping is "a type of activism that does not require policies," Conrad says. You can be an environmental champion in your own backyard.

SOURCES

Landscape architect Pamela Conrad is a principal in CMG Landscape Architecture (cmgsite.com) in San Francisco, California, and the founder of Climate Positive Design, climatepositivedesign.com. Anyone can access the resources and information on the website.

The High Line is a gritty, glorious garden in the pulsing heart of New York City, full of ideas for gardens and gardeners everywhere. It is a landmark, an ever-changing horticultural and social scene -- and an inspiration.

This garden doesn't attempt to hide its industrial roots. The abandoned train tracks running through the elevated park near the Hudson River are as much a part of the garden as the flowering shrubs, perennials and grasses that flourish there. The High Line celebrated its 10th anniversary this year and opened an extension, known as the Spur, the last section of the former freight line 30 feet above the hurly-burly of the city streets. With the addition of the Spur, the thriving greenway of the High Line is now nearly 1.5 miles long. Millions of visitors explore the space every year while taking in sensational views of the bustling city and the river.

Eric Rodriguez, the High Line's director of horticulture, is the steward of hundreds of thousands of plants, many of them North American native perennials and grasses, woven into a design by the renowned Dutch plantsman Piet Oudolf. The High Line doesn't represent an unobtainable model of perfection, Rodriguez says: It is a garden full of possibilities for anyone. "We are actively trying to encourage people to take ideas home," he says.

The park's design took its cues from the wild, weedy nature that had established itself on the tracks in the 25 years after the line was abandoned. It is a lively, exciting, densely packed garden -- of surpassing beauty at all seasons -- filled with hard-working perennials, shrubs and small trees. It's also an environmentally friendly place, designed to invite pollinators and conserve resources, and maintained without the use of herbicides or pesticides.

Rodriguez thinks of the High Line's planting scheme as "a vertical sandwich." In each area, he says, "we have a grass matrix, and on top of that is an herbaceous perennial matrix." In areas with woody plants, the design expands to include a layer of shrubs and a canopy of trees -- but since the soil is only about 8 inches deep all along the High Line, only relatively small trees and shrubs can be planted. Species with multiple stems, including buckeyes, fringe trees and serviceberries, thrive in the harsh conditions, exposed on all sides to wind and weather and to the reflected light and deep shadows cast by tall buildings.

Although most High Line trees will never be giants, leafy trees embrace the beds in summer; in winter, their trunks, branches and bark impart a rare beauty. Multistemmed trees and shrubs are easier to manage in the garden than single-trunk plants, Rodriguez says. When stems get too tall or too lanky, or start to grow out of bounds, they can be cut back (sometimes to the ground), and new stems emerge. It's a great strategy for home gardeners, too.

Oudolf's planting design calls for extremely tight spacing: six to eight plants per square foot. To make it work, "we put plants in very small," Rodriguez says. "In some ways, we push back on the instant gratification" by using smaller plants, he says, but the planting style allows the garden to conserve resources. Tight spacing reduces watering needs because the plants shade the soil, limiting moisture loss to evaporation. Close spacing also helps control weeds. Gardeners everywhere, including on the High Line, Rodriguez says, "are always trying to think about how to work less without compromising their aesthetics."

Spring and summer on the High Line are beautiful, of course, but fall and winter are also spectacular seasons in which to experience the garden. Drying perennial foliage and grasses rustle in the wind, and their seed heads throw elegant shadows and attract birds to the park through the winter. The winter light shining through the twiggy tracery of trees creates a dramatic contrast to the built environment all around. The dormant plants under gray skies or in the snow let visitors appreciate the season more fully. "It's important for us to have the full life cycle of the plants," Rodriguez says. High Line gardeners don't cut the herbaceous perennials and grasses back until spring.

Over the winter, the gardeners nurture new ideas for the seasons to come, Rodriguez says. They consider new species to add to the garden, looking for plants that will perform well in the changing urban environment. Buildings with reflective glass have increased the heat and light in some areas along the High Line, and wind speeds and patterns have also changed as new buildings have been put up nearby. Among other things, the gardeners are interested in introducing more plants that attract beneficial insects, Rodriguez says, "and we're adding things that we want just because they would be fun and pretty."

The High Line is not, strictly speaking, a garden but a park, and the gardeners look to nature for their inspiration. They study plant communities in native plant reserves in the region, including in coastal areas, where the vegetation has to be tough. The ideas they bring back to the city make the High Line more beautiful and sustainable, Rodriguez says, and the result may make you forget, just for a minute, that you're in New York City. But look again: This garden could be nowhere else.

SOURCES

-- The High Line is a public park on Manhattan's West Side. There is no admission charge. The park begins at the intersection of Washington and Gansevoort Streets, near the Whitney Museum, and continues up to 34th Street, just past Hudson Yards. The High Line is a former elevated train line, so you're above the traffic.

-- No matter where you live, the High Line is as close as your computer. The park's website, thehighline.org, is full of information about the history of the park, its development, pictures of plants and art you'll see in the park. There is a comprehensive plant list and a list of "plants of the moment." The website also has a calendar of events, information about tours, and information for anyone interested in becoming a Friend of the High Line or a volunteer. You can download a pocket guide to the park.

The High Line also has an app for your phone: a digital guide with an interactive map and information about food, events, vendors and restroom locations.

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More Ideas From the High Line

Here are some tips and ideas from Eric Rodriguez, horticulture director of the High Line:

-- A strong design is the foundation of every good garden. An aesthetically pleasing design and well-chosen plants let you spend your time and resources on becoming a good steward of your local environment.

-- Plants that are native to your region will thrive in the climate and conditions in your garden.

-- Choose plants that attract pollinators and beneficial insects.

-- Conserving resources sometimes involves letting things go. Remember that death is part of gardening. "Gardening becomes less stressful when you have a comfortable acceptance of some plant deaths," Rodriguez says. Even experienced gardeners sometimes kill plants.

-- Learn to appreciate the full life cycle of plants. Perennials that have worked hard in the garden all summer and fall should not be disturbed through the winter. They shelter birds and insects, help prevent erosion, and create a natural mulch for themselves and surrounding plants. Cut perennials back in early spring, not in the fall.

-- High Line gardeners compost all the clippings and trimmings from plants. The resulting compost is used as a mulch in the gardens, and in places to build up the soil.

-- One of the best resources for gardeners is a good field guide to plants in your region, Rodriguez says. There is much to learn from what is already there.

-- When you're in native-plant or natural areas, look for plants you might like to include in your garden. Notice where and how they are growing, and when you buy plants for your garden, try to provide similar conditions.

-- Remember that change is constant in a garden, and that trial and error are among the most important ways to learn what works best for you.