How to Plant, Grow, and Care for Superbena®

Superbena® are trailing, mounding, and cascading hybrid plants. Their versatility and variety make them excellent candidates for large containers, borders, and tree wells. Give them the care they need, and they’ll fill your garden with endless blooms from spring through fall.

Relatively new to the garden market, Superbenas® bloom more than most other annual bedding plants. They fill the yard with white, purple, red, orange, pink, and multicolor blossoms in tight clusters. New types come out every few years that are vigorous, colorful, and hardy.

These varieties are hybrids bred for their mounding, spreading habit, and prolific blooms. They’ll fit perfectly between your sunflowers, zinnias, and petunias. Tuck them in alongside other plants, or give them their own space and see how large they can grow.

No matter which variety you choose, you’ll enjoy these plants’ easygoing habits and radiant, eye-catching flower clusters. Give them the care they need, and they’ll thrive throughout the warm months.
What Is It?
Unlike most plant cultivars and varieties, these hybrids result from many different crosses between various species. Their diverse parental lineage makes them unique, and it gives them the attractive qualities we enjoy in the garden.

Origin
Superbena® lacks a native area because it’s the product of many controlled crosses between various species. Breeders transferred pollen from one species to another. They then grew the resulting seeds into seedlings that were unique, new specimens. With many crosses over many years, the resulting specimens look quite different from their parents.

Though commonly referred to as verbenas, these hybrids, alongside other verbenas, were recently reclassified from the genus Verbena to Glandularia. Most hybrid verbenas result from crosses between these four species:

Glandularia peruviana
Glandularia phlogiflora
Glandularia platensis
Glandularia tweedieana
Superbena® cultivars are licensed by the Proven Winners® ornamental plant company—they control the sale and distribution of the many different varieties. As new types come out, old ones become difficult to find. If you see the type you like, grab it! You may not be able to find it again.

Characteristics
With both mounding and trailing habits, these verbenas are variable in the way they grow. They’ll mound and spread along the ground like a ground cover, or they’ll spill over the edges of containers and raised beds. Their varied growth habits allow them to fit into many different spaces in the garden, whether they’re open, elevated, or narrow.

Superbena® grow toothed leaves that resemble catnip foliage. They’re bright green, providing a rich backdrop for the alluring blooms. They sprout from green stems that stay shorter than a foot tall. When trailing from baskets, the stems may reach two feet long with blooms and leaves along them.

Though most gardeners use these hybrids as annual bedding plants, they’re perennials in USDA hardiness zones 8 through 11. They’re frost-tender, dying back as cold temperatures arrive in autumn and winter.

Planting
You can’t grow Superbena® from seeds, as they’re typically sold to licensed wholesale growers and distributors. Nurseries grow seeds into seedlings, or “plugs,” which they transplant into white containers and sell to big-box garden centers. Look for the Proven Winners® white pots at your local plant store to find your favorite.
How to Grow
Adaptable and dependable, verbenas are more tolerant of drought, intense sunlight, and difficult growing conditions than other summer annuals. With some care and maintenance, they’ll thrive so long as the days are long, warm, and filled with sunshine.


Maintenance
No deadheading is necessary to keep these varieties blooming consistently. If they grow too leggy or sparse, you may trim them in early or midsummer to promote dense, bushy growth. A trimming will discourage flowers for a few weeks, but the results may be worth it in areas with long growing seasons.

Because these perennials are frost-tender, they’ll die when the first frost arrives. Overwinter them in containers indoors near a warm, sunny window, or root cuttings and plant them outside the next spring.

Propagation
These hybrids are unlikely to reseed themselves, making seed-growing a challenge. Instead, propagate them using cuttings or divisions. Propagation is legal for home use, but not for commercial distribution without a license. These asexual propagation methods are the most reliable, as they create clones with the same, desirable traits as the parents.