Planting season has begun in earnest in the South and, as they say, it will be matriculating your way wherever you live. I visited a garden center this week and it took my breath away with the giant selection. There was the new Supertunia Vista Cool Jazz Petunia too.

With the addition of Cool Jazz, the Vista group has grown to seven and now owns 454 awards. When you think of Supertunia Vista petunias you probably think of Bubblegum, the bright pink variety with the big stature. But did you know all seven varieties have the potential to reach 2 feet tall and 3 feet wide? Everyone has their favorites; son James has been a Vista Fuchsia guy while I have had a special place for Vista Paradise.

Lately, Vista Jazzberry, the 2024 "Petunia of the Year," has climbed into my favorite list along with this year’s Vista Cool Jazz. Cool Jazz still looks like light lavender blue to me while others see some pink. Either way, the color of Cool Jazz goes with everything.

This brings up recipes. While you may think of the Supertunia Vista group as the monsters of baskets and containers, they really are the workhorses, so to speak, of mixed container designs too. They work with Superbena verbenas and Luscious lantanas, Rockin salvias and Superbells calibrachoas. If you are thinking this plant has different water requirements than this one, forget it! We have to water containers in the South every day unless we get rain. Thus, all the plants are pals when it comes to water.

While I have basically been talking about Supertunia Vistas as container plants, they are also your go-to plants for large sweeping beds of color or pocket plantings at the entrance or other high-traffic areas around the home.

I live and garden in zone 8 Georgia. I planted Supertunia Vistas in late October, and they dazzled until midsummer when a roving deer herd discovered them. They showed remarkable cold tolerance and have so much potential for fall planting in zones 8 and 9. The key is making beds with a rich organic mix that drains well. Boggy winter soil is not your friend. For this reason, I have become fond of the new raised bed soil planting mixes.

The Supertunia Vistas do one other thing that is taken for granted: They attract pollinators. You will always see hummingbirds visiting, but I have photographed American Lady butterflies on Bubblegum, Pipevine swallowtails on Silverberry, and Eastern Tiger swallowtails on all. For this reason, The Garden Guy uses practically no pesticides throughout the garden.

Because our growing season is so long in the South, fertilizing is an important practice, even more so on containers with daily watering. In the containers I like to use a water-soluble mix every two to three weeks. I pour it out of the old-fashioned water can with a spout. The flowers in the ground are fertilized with control release granules at planting and then again, a couple of times during the growing season according to the container label. Oh yes, and I usually cut back in August.

The winter seemed long, so you are probably eager like The Garden Guy. You can’t buy a better petunia than those in the Supertunia Vista series. They come in Supertunia Vista Bubblegum, Paradise, Fuchsia, Jazzberry, Cool Jazz, Snowdrift and Silverberry, all of which are award winners.

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(Norman Winter, horticulturist, garden speaker and author of “Tough-as-Nails Flowers for the South” and “Captivating Combinations: Color and Style in the Garden.” Follow him on Facebook @NormanWinterTheGardenGuy.)

(NOTE TO EDITORS: Norman Winter receives complimentary plants to review from the companies he covers.)

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