When you're shopping for bright annuals for your flower beds and veggies for your garden, what do you look for? Bloom color, a nicely shaped plant, a tried-and-true variety? Or do you look for a red, white and blue shield - the logo of the All-America Selections, a not-for-profit organization - printed on the small plastic stake?

The logo's important if you're a gardener who likes to keep up with the latest horticultural trends - having the newest color blooms, the flashiest, most disease-resistant veggies. It's a sign the plant in the pot is a new introduction by hybridizers who each year choose a half dozen or so - some annual flowers, some vegetables - and give them the AAS stamp of approval. It's a new-variety promotion program that turns 75 years old this year and will be celebrated Sept. 28 to Oct. 1 at the Garden Writers Annual Symposium in Oklahoma City, Okla.

The AAS logo is a sign the plant has proved itself in national field trials, meeting criteria set by horticultural professionals including earliness to bloom or set fruit and length of season; improved color or fragrance, for flowers, or taste, for vegetables; new forms or shapes; heat and cold tolerance and disease resistance.

The program is successful, at least within the industry. But demand is fickle.

"Actually, I don't know that any of my customers ever look for (the shield)," Bev Marcum-McMullen said. She and her husband, Deno Lewis, own C & M Landscaping Garden Center & Nursery in Richland.

But some gardeners must. A couple of years ago, All-America Selections was responsible for the sudden popularity of the "Black Pearl" ornamental pepper. And in 1995, it helped make the first "Wave" petunia a monster hit.

But if "Holy Mole" peppers aren't ripening in your vegetable garden or the "Pacifica Burgundy Halo" vincia isn't blooming on the patio, you're in good company. Workers at four of the Mid-Columbia nurseries contacted by the Herald couldn't rattle off this year's winners either.

"Sometimes a new plant is promoted with lots of advertising, big ads in House & Garden and Sunset, and sometimes there's not much emphasis at all," said Tom Kay, owner of The Flower Farm in Pasco and Kennewick.

Even when the AAS winners are promoted, gardeners can sometimes have a hard time finding them.

"It can be a problem," Marcum-McMullen said, "when gardening magazines write about these new introductions and say check at your local nursery. We don't always have them, yet."

Sometimes it takes a season or two for seed production to match demand.

Usually wholesalers can get the seed easily, which means the new introductions grown and sold in pots will be out on the market. But seeds, that's another matter.

"Seeds are impressively expensive. It's difficult for seed packet companies to put more than two or three seeds of a new variety in a packet and still be able to sell it for less than two dollars," Kay said.

Even if the new plants are readily available, gardeners aren't always quick to ditch their tried-and-true varieties for an unknown.

"Gardeners are creatures of tradition. We tend to buy the same varieties we're familiar with because we've had good luck in the past," Kay said.

Sometimes just getting customers to try something new is the hardest part," Kay said.

So is the AAS symbol just hype?

Certainly that's part of it. The basic purpose of the awards is to promote new varieties of annuals (which have to be bought new each year) and thereby generate sales for breeders, growers and nurseries.

Some of the plants however are genuine breakthroughs - "Wave Purple" petunias - low, spreading heavy bloomers that don't need deadheading - were in the vanguard of a petunia revival. "Purple Majesty" millet in 2003 brought to ornamental use a grass most people had thought of as birdseed. "Sugar Snap" peas, with their fat edible pods, were a revolutionary new kind of vegetable in 1979.

To celebrate the 75th anniversary of the program, AAS named five all-time classic winners: "Wave Purple," a petunia from 1995; "Ideal Violet," a dianthus from 1992; "Big Beef," a tomato from 1994; "Ultra Crimson Star," a petunia from 1988; and "Majestic Giants Mix," pansies from 1966.

But other AAS winners have been no more than marginal improvements, appearing for a few seasons, then fading away.

For more information on the All-America Selections, go to www.all-americaselections.org.

See the gardens

In Washington and Oregon, the All-America Selections display gardens can be found in:

Woodinville, Wash., Molbak's, 13625 NE 175th St., flowers only.

Jennings Park, Wash., 6915 Armar Road.

Albany, Ore., Nichols Garden Nursery, 1190 Old Salem Road NE.

Grants Pass, Ore., Josephine County Fairgrounds, 1451 Fairgrounds Road, flowers only.

Oregon City, Clackamas Community College, 19600 S. Molalla Ave.

Redmond, Ore., Oregon State University, 3893 SW Airport Way.

*Unless noted, the gardens display flowers and vegetables.

Honors worth noting

Yearly "Best of" lists are fine but the real test may be whether the plants published are available 10 years from now. Other groups that publish annual lists, which judge plants on their track records, include:

Perennial Plant of the Year. Members of the Perennial Plant Association - botanists, breeders, nursery owners, landscapers - are polled; they judge plants for low maintenance, pest and disease resistance, availability and multiple seasons of interest. See www.perennialplant.org for a list.

Pennsylvania Horticulture Society Gold Medal. Trees, shrubs and woody vines are judged for beauty, pest and disease resistance, and ease of growing in USDA Zones 5 to 7. The society honors the winners each year at its Philadelphia Flower Show. See www.goldmedalplants.org for a list.

GreatPlants. The Nebraska Nursery and Landscape Association and the Nebraska Statewide Arboretum select worthy but underused plants. For a list, see http://arboretum.unl.edu/greatplants.

Royal Horticultural Society Award of Garden Merit. It is considered a high honor in the gardening world and is sometimes mentioned in American plant catalogs. See plants at www.rhs.org.uk/plants/award_plants.asp.

Proven Winners, a company that introduces new plants, sends plant materials to university field trials and test gardens nationwide plus conducts its own trials at test sites in nationwide. Go to www.provenwinners.com/informationcenter/trials.cfm.

The United States National Arboretum, in Washington, D.C., provides basic and developmental research on trees, shrubs, turf and floral plants through a program of testing and genetic improvement. Every year new plants are released to the public through the nursery and floral industries. Check out the latest releases at www.usna.usda.gov/index.html and click on "Gardens & Horticulture."