First Place Flowers

Katie Guitreau, landscape manager at the LSU AgCenter Botanic Gardens at Burden, revealed two of her favorite new horticultural discoveries this year—a stunning new canna lilly, South Pacific Scarlet, that reached its impressive full size within a few months time and a heat-tolerant vinca variety called First Kiss Blueberry. These two plants, recommend by All-America Selections (AAS), an independent, non-profit that tests plant varieties and recommends the best performers, were just a couple of the show-stoppers that earned Guitreau—or more specifically, her All-America Selections Display Garden—first place in the category for AAS display gardens with fewer than ten thousand visitors per year.

The AAS Display Garden is just one of many at the Botanic Gardens designed and managed by Guitreau, who began her tenure at Burden as an eager, ambitious student worker in the summer of 2010. At that time, she took on the Display Garden, which lay weed-infested, as her pet project.

Three years later, Guitreau oversees about eighty percent of the gardens at Burden; and this year, she made it her number one goal to win the AAS Display Garden title away from Mississippi State, to whom she had to cede the title last year for second place.

Guitreau outlined her strategy: inundation. She established AAS plants in every possible location, expanding the garden to every spare nook and fecund cranny at Burden. It worked. “I’m thrilled to have gotten [first [place]. I love what I do, and I love gardening, and I love design. I couldn’t stop smiling for hours.”

The warm season Display Garden is the one that earned first place, but Guitreau plants the garden twice a year, offering cool season designs that take advantage of Louisiana’s mild temperatures. The winning garden has long since been pulled, but visitors can currently visit the cool season display and pop in again this summer to see the garden in full summer bloom. Many local nurseries carry seed and plant varieties recommended by AAS, including Naylor’s Hardware & Garden Supply (naylorsbr.com) and Clegg’s Nursery (cleggsnursery.com). Visit the All America Selections website to see this and previous year’s winners (all-americaselections.org).