After seeing the flowers at the Young’s Plant Farm annual garden tour in Auburn, Alabama, I felt a sense of desperation to get my hands on the Luscious Basket Tangeglow lantana. I don’t always think about lantana being a component plant in mixed-container designs, but they had several that were simply dazzling.

Luscious Basket Tangeglow is a fairly new lantana and its name gives reference to its compact nature of 12 to 26 inches in height and a spread of 12 to 24 inches. You might wonder about the differences in height and width, and that is attributed to the length of the growing season.

Luscious Basket Tangeglow has done great in university trials, winning Perfect Score at University of Minnesota, Iowa State, Oklahoma State and University of Tennessee. Then it took home Directors Select at Penn State and a bunch of Top Performer awards.

The Luscious Basket Tangeglow offers flowers that might at first seem like all of the other lantanas in the market with orange and yellow but it is the third color, peach, that makes it unique and opens the door to such artistic recipes as those seen at the Young’s Plant Farm tour.

I think my favorite was a recipe called Never Lonely. I can tell from my Facebook fans this was a hit according to their responses. It features Supertunia Bermuda Beach, Superbells Yellow calibrachoa and of course the star of this column, the Luscious Basket Tangeglow lantana.

The name, Never Lonely, would certainly seem appropriate from a couple of reasons. Pollinators would be ever present, and of course, friends and neighbors would always be around gawking and gasping at its beauty.

The next recipe that brought out my camera was Golden Gala. It featured Goldilocks Rocks bidens, cheerful golden daisy-like flowers. Then there was this year’s new Superbells Double Redstone calibrachoa with red petals and gold margins, and of course our star Luscious Basket Tangeglow lantana.

It would not be hard for me to say the next recipe was my favorite. The color partnership takes your breath away. Oddly it was there without a name. The tag simply read Southern Combo Number 15. When I posted it to my Facebook page, more than a couple asked about a particular partner.

Southern Combo Number 15 featured Superbells Cherry Red calibrachoa. Son James has grown this one more than once but old Dad now has it on the to do list. The Cherry Red color with the Luscious Basket Tangeglow was simply dreamy. You could look at it all day.

Then there was the third partner that caused the stir within my Facebook world. It was Mezoo Trailing Red, Livingstone Daisy. It was known botanically as Dorotheanthus bellidiformis but looks to now be Aptenia cordifolia. It is the lush succulent variegated foliage that tugs at our heartstrings, but you may catch sight of a red daisy-like flower. The three together make one creative combination.

Luscious Basket Tangeglow lantana is rated zone 9 and warmer as perennial and will be worth every penny as an annual. Sunlight and well-drained soil are the prerequisites. The Garden Guy has been getting a spring return on all of the other Luscious varieties in zone 8 Georgia, and hopefully this will be the same with Luscious Basket Tangeglow.

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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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