The Garden Guy was a scaevola guru when scaevola wasn’t cool. Well, maybe that’s a slight exaggeration; let me explain. The year was 1997 and your humble columnist was the coordinator of the Mississippi Medallion Award program, whereby we selected outstanding plants for promotion, based on how they performed in trials. That year we chose Proven Winner’s New Wonder scaevola as one of the winners.

It just so happens that Louisiana chose New Wonder scaevola as a Louisiana Select Award-Winner and Georgia chose New Wonder scaevola for their Georgia Gold Medal Award program. Louisiana and Georgia still recognize outstanding plants but under different names. This little flower named after Roman hero Mucius Scaevola may now have a star associated with its name.

Gardeners may not know or even wish to know that this hero decided to show his bravery by burning his right hand off and showing no pain. Thus, scaevola, a fan-shaped flower reminiscent of a hand, later became a prized flower. Now however, still botanically named Scaevola aemula, the flower has become a star as the Stardiva series makes its debut under the Proven Winners label in 2025.

The university trials are still being conducted and high scores are coming in, even though the summer temperatures are creating an off-the-chart misery index over much of the country. The Stardiva series boast three colors, blue, pink and white. The plants, while not the largest at 8 inches tall with a 14-inch spread, grab your attention in mixed containers asking that the camera capture the moment.

While all of mine are in containers, I have seen them in window boxes and landscape beds. This scaevola has a rugged perseverance like all varieties before it. There is something about those mounds of stars, however, that makes you fall madly in love with each and every color.

I created a lot of containers this year trialing the new Virtuoso dahlia series. The Stardiva scaevola seems like one of the perfect filler plants in the design. I say filler but you definitely get just the right amount of spiller activity too.

I used Stardiva Blue with Supertunia Saffron Finch, an incredible yellow petunia that made its debut this year along with Virtuoso Classy Carmine dahlia. The blue, yellow and red form a color blend we call triadic harmony, which is basically three colors equal distance apart on the color wheel.

Son James, and the Eden Estate Management team performed their magic at Kim and Joey Mixon’s home in Phenix City, Alabama. Kim, a local real estate guru, has become our favorite flower aficionado. The central portion of her window box features a monochromatic color scheme. The team used Stardiva Pink and Stardiva White scaevola, Angelface Wedgwood Pink angelonia or summer snapdragon, and Virtuoso Pinkerific dahlia. All of the flowers are making their debut in 2025 and this is a dynamite combination.

Scaevola has made a living, so to speak, in the ground, and at the Young’s Plant Annual Garden Tour in June we all were shown the power of white. White is a contrasting color that makes all other colors pop, especially used modestly in quantity, which is just what Stardiva scaevola does. At Young’s they used Stardiva White in beds with sun-tolerant impatiens and in another with cuphea, ageratum and petunias.

These are easy from the standpoint of maintenance, requiring no deadheading. The soil should be fertile and well-drained. During preparation, mix in controlled-release granules at the time of planting and again in mid-summer. In my mixed containers that have been getting hand watered daily and some twice daily, I have been using water-soluble mix poured out of the old water can with spout, every 2 to 3 weeks.

Stardiva scaevolas will be rock solid performers from spring until frost, which is the maximum bang for your buck. These are must-have plants next spring.

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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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