The display gardens at Ball Horticultural Company’s home office in West Chicago have been the evaluation and testing grounds for plants from leading breeders and marketers from around the world for more than 80 years. Read this article for free: Already have an account? To continue reading, please subscribe: * The display gardens at Ball Horticultural Company’s home office in West Chicago have been the evaluation and testing grounds for plants from leading breeders and marketers from around the world for more than 80 years. Read unlimited articles for free today: Already have an account? The display gardens at Ball Horticultural Company’s home office in West Chicago have been the evaluation and testing grounds for plants from leading breeders and marketers from around the world for more than 80 years.
The gardens span 3.6 hectares of beds and containers filled with annual, perennial and vegetable varieties that undergo rigorous evaluation, including the newest plant varieties that will be at retail garden centres for the very first time. When I was invited to visit the gardens at Ball this summer along with other garden writers from across North America, I packed a sun umbrella.
The forecast called for extreme heat and my expectation was that I would be visiting a typical trial garden with row upon row of varieties planted beneath the blistering sun. But what started out in 1933 and continued for several decades as a row trial garden at Ball is today an extraordinary pa.