The Breeder Behind Some of the Plants That Changed Our Industry

If you’ve bought annuals at a garden center over the last 20 or 30 years, there’s a pretty good chance you’ve grown something from Sakata without realizing it.

SunPatiens, Profusion zinnias, SuperCal, Viking begonias.

They’re very different plants, but they all came from the same breeder.

Sakata’s history goes back to 1913, when Takeo Sakata founded the company in Japan. Its first breeding station opened in 1930, and by 1966 Sakata’s Majestic Giants became the world’s first commercial hybrid pansy and received an All-America Selections award. Sakata Seed America will celebrate 50 years in North America in 2027.

But what’s interesting to me isn’t simply how old the company is.

It’s the number of times Sakata has introduced something that actually changed what growers could do with a familiar plant.

This is probably the best example.

Traditional impatiens were shade plants. They were enormously popular, but their usefulness was limited by how much sun and heat they could tolerate.

Then came SunPatiens.

SunPatiens Vigorous Shell Pink. In 2015 Spreading Shell Pink became the first vegetatively propagated plant from cuttings to win an AAS Flower Award.

Sakata marks 2005 as the milestone year for SunPatiens, and the following year the series received a Home Depot Most Innovative New Product award.

For growers, landscapers and gardeners, the bigger change was simple:

Suddenly there was an impatiens that could be used in sun.

That’s why I consider SunPatiens a genuine game changer. They didn’t just add another flower color. They expanded what an entire category of plants could do.

Today they’re one of the most important annuals we grow.

Zinnias have been around forever, but traditional zinnias aren’t always the easiest landscape plants.

Disease — particularly foliar disease — can become a problem, and many older types get fairly large and rough-looking as summer progresses.

Profusion helped create a different kind of zinnia.

Zinnia Profusion 5 Color Mix. Plants finish around 14–18 inches tall but can spread 20–24 inches.

They’re compact, uniform, extremely tolerant of heat and drought, and Sakata specifically breeds the series around strong disease resistance and season-long landscape performance.

The breeding has been recognized repeatedly. Several Profusion colors have received All-America Selections Gold Medals.

Zinnia Profusion Red Yellow Bicolor received an AAS Gold Medal in 2021 — the first AAS Gold Medal awarded in 17 years.

That’s a plant where breeding took something gardeners already loved and made it much easier to use.

Begonias have undergone a similar transformation.

Viking is Sakata’s large landscape begonia series. These aren’t little wax begonias for the front edge of a flower bed. Sakata lists them at roughly 20–24 inches tall and 24–28 inches wide, with varieties in green, bronze and even very dark chocolate foliage.

Begonia Viking XL Red on Chocolate. Viking Explorer Rose on Green received an AAS Gold Medal in 2022.

They’re big plants designed to produce a lot of color in landscapes and large containers, in sun or shade.

Again, it’s not just another begonia color. It’s breeding that changes how the plant can be used.

This is the Sakata line I think gardeners are going to hear a lot more about.

SuperCal is a Petchoa — a hybrid combining petunia and calibrachoa genetics. The goal is essentially to combine desirable characteristics from both.

We’ve grown SuperCal for years, but the newer SuperCal Premium line has become especially interesting.

The plants have larger flowers and strong roots, tolerate both cool and hot conditions, and one characteristic we’ve really noticed is how well the flowers deal with rain. Sakata specifically promotes SuperCal for its ability to withstand heavy rain and recover with little damage.

That’s not a minor trait in Indiana.

A beautiful petunia doesn’t do you much good if a three-day stretch of thunderstorms turns every flower into mush.

Petchoa SuperCal® Premium Caramel Yellow.

Petchoa SuperCal® Premium Cinnamon.

SuperCal Premium also has some really unusual colors now — Caramel Yellow, Cinnamon, Bordeaux, Purple Dawn, Red Maple, Sunset Orange and others that don’t necessarily look like traditional petunias.

We’re seeing more interest in them from garden centers, and we’re growing more of them.

I think these four plants show it pretty well.

The best breeding isn’t always about making the flower bigger.

• ✓ Sometimes it’s making an impatiens tolerate sun.
• ✓ Or making a zinnia more disease resistant.
• ✓ Or making a begonia big enough to fill a landscape.
• ✓ Or making a petunia-type flower that doesn’t collapse every time it rains.

That’s why growers pay attention to companies like Sakata.

A new color is nice. A plant that lets you do something you couldn’t do before is much more interesting.

Reference: Sakata Ornamentals company history and product information; All-America Selections winner records. Variety photography courtesy of Ball Seed / Ball Horticultural Company.