The 2026 season is almost here! Submit your variety suggestions to order@teesplants.com!
Visit Tees Plants on YouTube to see some behind the scenes fun!
Go back and see 2025 selections here!
Anyways, what’s growing on?
Thanks for visiting Tee’s Plants! Tee’s Plants is an award winning novelty plant grower serving Chatham-Kent, based in Dresden, offering individual and volume sales of unique and staple edible plants, as well as an impressive collection of new and classic ornamentals. Tee’s Plants operates a few public tent/yard plant sales on certain days each year to celebrate with the Friends of the Bees of Canada. You might even find Tee’s Plants at farmer’s markets. I’m not a large business, I’m just a small independent ecologist.
I challenge you to grow something you can’t find at the giant nursery this year. From flowers to vegetables, there’s definitely something unique here for you. Let me introduce you to a customer favorite at Tee’s: the Citrus Gem Marigold. It’s a unique marigold with small flowers, and it smells just like citrus fruit when brushed against or harvested. Its fragrant scent and stunning blooms can be utilized anywhere from arrangements to beverages. Offered in Orange and Yellow, along with 25+ other marigold cultivars each year!
Notable 2026 Availability Mentions
- #1 Local Wave Petunia, Beacon Impatiens, and Premium Hybrid Marigold selection! No Sprays, No Worries!
- Numerous AAS (All America Selections) and other award winning vegetable varieties, like Mountain Merit Beefsteak tomatoes! It’s one of the most disease resistant tomatoes available on the market, and is capable of resisting the high pest and disease pressure present from our surrounding agricultural community – even with our humidity!
- Premium herbs like Emerald Tower basil, which resists flowering for up to 3 months longer than other varieties, and reaches up to 3 feet tall!
- Vegetative options of coleus, sweet potato vine, premium grasses, and more!
- New expanded “functional” ornamental selection with more lemon grass, eucalyptus, lavender, echinacea, and more!
- Localized bee, butterfly, and bird annual/perennial selections, with award winning cultivars of plants like tithonia, milkweed, salvia, rudbeckia, liatris, and other landscaping plants like creeping thyme.
- Educational plants to help foster environmental respect with children
Tee’s Garden Theme 2026: Disco Inferno
Each year, Tee’s Plants anxiously awaits the planned themes from local horticultural societies, but unfortunately they tend to plan too late. Tee’s Plants will no longer be participating in growing for localized garden themes, and will instead celebrate our unique vibrancy with our own stunning theme for the year, consisting of several individual tones and ideas.
The selected theme is designed to offer great color contrast from close, and afar, and utilizes popular trending and award winning cultivars from breeders around the world!
- Main tones are Reds, Yellows, Oranges (90%)
- Bonus points for lots of bicolour flowers!
- Accent tones are White and Pinks (10%)
Avoid pale yellow, dark/bright purple, or blue. Use bicolor flowers often, especially near single colored sections. Use a layered approach, combining 2-4 tiers of plants with varying heights. Group similar plants near one another to provide maximum visual impact from the road. (Triangle pattern pointing to the road or main viewpoint)
Whether it’s my stunning award winning zinnias, or the newest and coolest petunia shades, we’ve got you covered and included them in some exciting and showy themes! These themes not for you? No worries, they’re just ideas! There are lots of other colours and cultivars available for all your needs!
Love this theme?
Grab any assortment of plants to start your colour construction this Spring, and Tee’s Plants will give you a packet of Bright Lights cosmos seeds to plant for as a gift! You’ll LOVE them, and so will the pollinators! Use these to add a vibrant backing tier and depth to your inferno!
Coming Early 2026: Disco Inferno Plant Roster check back soon.
If you’d like to vote for some of your favorite colour themes, check out our strawpoll!
Don’t worry, Disco Inferno is just a theme idea! I have all the rest of the colours you’d want too!
2026 Awards and Novel Mentions
- Profusion Zinnia: Tee’s Plants landscape flower of the year! This patio sized zinnia cultivar will produce the most colorful blooms you’ve ever seen seen! It comes in several different flavors, like this award winning “Red Yellow Bicolour” variant, which recently won an AAS award.
- Profusion Zinnias aren’t as susceptible to the same disease and pest pressure as other zinnias, like Japanese beetles and powdery mildew!
- Compact plants keep their blooms tight with great resistance to adverse weather, deadheading is not required
- Maintains intense colour with our local heat and humidity
- Other colours in the series have won various industry awards too, like the beautiful red variant, which was very popular for 2025!
- No garden? No problem! This variety is bred to thrive in containers of about 12″ in diameter and larger, and would be beautiful on your patio or porch
- Mango Tango: Tee’s Plants marigold of the year! Also winning several other notable awards recently, this variety boasts a special, intense pattern to catch eyes on a plant that remains uniform and sturdy even during the worst summer heat
- Bicolour tone offers great contrast, looks amazing by itself and as a companion plant
- Colour doesn’t shift like some other cultivars, this pattern remains stable the entire season.
- Large, semi-double anemone flowers have a very small crest
Educational Plants
Let Tee’s Plants be your plant source for teaching! Moms and Dads know best that kiddos love having stuff on their hands make its way into their mouths! That means pesticides, herbicides, and growth regulators too, unfortunately.
Tee’s Plants keeps it simple, and grows everything so it’s super safe for the bees, butterflies, and birds. That means you all too! No pesticides, No herbicides, No growth regulators. EVER!
Tee’s Plants has seasonal projects ready to go for you and your little one. Here are just a few ideas!
- Free Sunflower Seeds – Grow one of two special formulas, available to Tee’s Plants customers for free! (Until I run out each year, of course!) They’re selected to please both our eyes, and our bee, butterfly, and bird pals!
- Super Tall – Classic, tall sunflowers that have one giant flower on each plant. They’re an important energy source for bees, butterflies, and especially the birds, with the massive seeds they leave behind for their Fall and Winter snack!
- Tee’s Tall Mix – A mix made up of several of my favorite premium sunflower varieties! They’re a surprise consisting of branching, and single sunflowers in several shades! Just as loved by pollinators!
- Butterfly Host Plants – An increasingly important part of holistic development for children is recognizing the impact that their ecological respect can have here on Earth. Utilize common pollinators to teach children about the lifecycle of several bugs, and how they help us.
- Milkweed – Tee’s Plants offers different milkweed varieties to welcome Monarch caterpillars to your property. This gives you the opportunity to possibly witness and enjoy the entire lifecycle of the Monarch butterfly from egg to departure. Many of my customers have great success collecting Monarch butterflies for the summer!
- New England Aster – If you want a runway for your pollinators, you’re going to need a fuel depot too! This aster is an absolute nectar pump, providing crucial late-season energy to large pollinators, as well as safe refuge for their eggs and caterpillars.
- Massive Mammoth Dill – To attract the swallowtails of Southwestern Ontario! These tall and fragrant dill plants will flower quickly, and intensely to welcome swallowtail caterpillars of your own!
- And more! – Other pollinator plants like coneflower, rudbeckia, tithonia, alyssum, zinnias, and marigolds help support pollinator travels and nearby habitats.
- Help support entire populations of beloved bugs, like the firefly and native ladybug!
- Baby Pumpkins – So easy to succeed with, try growing a mini pumpkin with your mini you. They’re easy to control, and you’re likely to have several little pumpkins to enjoy for Halloween. Several varieties available!
- Fruits, Vegetables, and more!
- Just let them pick! With a little guidance, Tee’s Plants can help Mom or Dad choose the right project plants! Whether it’s to make a small flower pot for grandma, or to grow the biggest melon in town, there will be amazing options for you!
- From experience, children very much enjoy selecting things from large assortments. Very commonly, those plants are marigolds, petunias, impatiens, and pansies/violas. They love having the opportunity to pick their favorites, weighing their preferences before your eyes! With up to 30 colours and patterns for each variety, the options are impressive! Give them an opportunity to select a theme for you! (Or even just a beautiful assortment!)
- Visit my baby bees! I maintain a small population of mason bees in Dresden, Ontario. Visit in the Spring and watch how quickly my pollinator buddies zoom around the flowers nearby. They’re a testament to my safe growing methods, and they’re very cute. There’s a near 100% chance that one of my bees visits your flowers before you purchase!
Tee’s Plants grows popular pumpkin plants for you to succeed in-time for Halloween! (Late May/Early June)
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From The Friends of the Bees: Favorite Annuals for 2025
Repost from fotb.ca: The Friends of the Bees have selected interesting annuals we recommend you try for the year of 2025! Consider trying these varieties which provide both stunning looks, and help assist your pollinator friends. Growers celebrating with the Friends of the Bees will often offer FOTB annuals of the year for you to
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Tee’s Plants is Cancelling American varieties
As tensions around trade policies continue to rise, the future of cross-border seed sourcing has become increasingly uncertain. Recent developments suggest that tariffs on American agricultural products, including seeds, may increase significantly, making them less viable for small growers like us. In response, Tee’s Plants will be phasing out all American seed varieties by 2026
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How to Build Cheap Flower Baskets and Planters (2025)
Hanging baskets are a beautiful part of the summer. Whether they’re hanging in your city’s downtown or over your porch, they always deliver a punch of colour. They’re also quite expensive to buy in-season, especially when they’re purchased from somewhere convenient like a grocery store. These days, seeing prices of up to $75+ per planter
Check out the rest of the blog articles below.
Testimonials and Reviews
Here are some of my favorite reviews and messages I’ve received, posted with the permission of the kind gardeners like you! If you’d like to submit a review or pictures, please email order@teesplants.com!
That’s actually the only time I’ve had impatiens last that long, and never had that colour before. They didn’t get the most sun either, they grew like newguineas! Just love and fertilizer!
– Dresden Gardener
You grew that coleus last year and those were a favorite. Lots of people asked about them! They grew very well in the pots under the shade of the big walnut trees. Nothing ever does!
– Dresden Gardener
There are like 12 monarch caterpillars between all 3 of the milkweed. Had no idea it was actually that simple lol! Thanks for that, he loves butterflies. Is this the best kind for monarchs or other butterflies?
– Chatham Gardener
No one ever has the marigolds you do. Maybe 3 colours if I’m lucky. I got the 6-pack from the store too but they didn’t catch up by Canada Day to yours. More big ones, and red ones please!
– Wallaceburg Gardener
The giant pansies are my favorite favorite favorite. I have not seen those in years. So different too. Some smell, some don’t. Seems like purple smells best?
– Croton Gardener
Tidal wave petunias literally look just like the pictures online. I planted them the same as I did as when I replanted the planter but there are literally 2-3 feet more of petunias on each side. I do fertilize ever 2 weeks though as it’s recommended. I actually don’t commonly see the running petunias outside of proven winners, whenever I do find wave petunias they are not these.
– Tupperville Gardener
Are you a variety breeder, seed retailer, or other related company? Tee’s Plants would like to help you with your science and trial your product. Contact me!