Photo Courtesy of Proven Winners

So last year I bought a flat of them from Anton’s Greenhouse in Evanston. Put some in a flower box on my front porch, some in the garden bed in front of the house and a few more in the teeny spaces between the sidewalk and the picket fence. They all did splendidly. Mind you, they needed regular fertilization to continue packing their wallops of bloom, but that’s true of any petunia (and also of callibrachoa, especially when grown in containers).

This year as luck would have it, I only had one Vista Pink Bubblegum, so I planted it in a 12-inch black plastic pot and set the pot on the ground in the border in front of the house. Full sun. Every once in a while I would give it some fertilizer when I found it looking at me a little askance as if to say “Have you forgotten something?” But then it would perk right up again.
Right now in the second half of August, it’s looking as handsome as ever.

I don’t know what it is about the people who name plants, but it seems to me that my favorite cultivars nowadays have the worst names. Pinky Winky™ hydrangea is a case in point. 

But as people in the industry will tell you, it’s memorable.  And no doubt that IS the point.

—Carolyn Ulrich