Meet Jamesbrittenia: One of Our New Annuals for 2027

Here’s a plant most people have never heard of, doing a job a lot of gardeners have wished for: bacopa that can actually take an Indiana July.

Jamesbrittenia. I’ll admit that’s not the easiest plant name to remember. But the plant itself looks surprisingly familiar. If you’ve grown bacopa in a hanging basket, you’re already pretty close.

Bacopa is one of my favorite spring combination plants. It has a beautiful trailing habit and produces masses of little flowers that spill over the edge of a container.

Its weakness is Indiana summer. Bacopa likes cooler conditions. Once we get into prolonged heat it can stop flowering as heavily and never quite look like it did in May.

Jamesbrittenia fills a very similar role. It’s a trailing-to-mounding plant with loads of small flowers, so you can use it as a filler and spiller in containers and hanging baskets.

The difference is its ability to handle summer. Modern Jamesbrittenia breeding has shown substantially better heat and humidity tolerance than bacopa, continuing to flower through conditions where bacopa cycles out of bloom.

That’s what caught our attention.

The one we’re adding for next year is Jammin’ from Kientzler North America.

Historically, Jamesbrittenia has had one big problem for growers: the roots could be finicky. That matters, because you can breed the prettiest flower in the world, but if we can’t reliably produce a good root system and finish a nice plant, it isn’t particularly useful.

Kientzler has been breeding Jammin’ specifically for better grower performance. GrowerTalks reported this summer that the new series launches with five colors and that the breeding work focused on overcoming the delicate root systems associated with older Jamesbrittenia.

Jammin’ Coral has also drawn attention this year. It was shortlisted for 2026 RHS Chelsea Plant of the Year, where it was described as heat- and drought-tolerant, repeat flowering through summer, and requiring no deadheading. Penn State’s 2026 flower trials are currently evaluating Jammin’ Coral, Lilac and Wine as new entries.

We’re planning two uses for Jammin’ next spring.

First, we’ll sell it individually in 4.5-inch pots. That gives you the option to use it anywhere you’d normally consider bacopa: along the edge of a planter, in a window box, or spilling over a container.

Second, we’re going to use it as a component in our hanging baskets. That’s actually what I’m most interested to see. We build baskets around plants that have to coexist for an entire Indiana summer, and a beautiful component that disappears when July arrives doesn’t do us much good.

Jamesbrittenia gives us that fine texture and mass of little flowers we like about bacopa, with much better potential to keep performing through heat.

This one’s pretty straightforward. Give it plenty of sun and good drainage.

Jamesbrittenia doesn’t want to stay waterlogged. Once established, Jammin’ Coral has shown good drought tolerance, although anything growing in a hanging basket still needs regular watering during summer. It also keeps flowering without constant deadheading.

We’re not adding it because people are walking into garden centers asking for Jamesbrittenia. Most people have never heard the name. We’re adding it because we think it can do a job better.

If you like what bacopa does in a spring hanging basket but wish it handled July and August better, keep an eye out for Jammin’ next spring.

Reference: GrowerTalks · RHS Chelsea Plant of the Year 2026 shortlist · Penn State Flower Trials 2026 · Kientzler North America · Schlegel Greenhouse production notes