Bard Arboretum Burpee Trial Garden Report 2025

BURPEE TRIAL GARDEN Final Report November 2025 Prepared by: Amy Parrella ‘99 and Joy Terentiev ‘26 Additional contributions by: Violet DiBasio ‘27, Max Frackman ‘27, and Lucia Lennox ‘28 ABSTRACT: The Burpee Trial Garden is a new initiative at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, that is designed to test and grow new and experimental flowers, vegetables, and herb seeds. It provides educational opportunities for hands-on gardening and scientific evaluation for field-proven top performers, home gardeners, and the horticultural industry. The Burpee Trial Garden was grown, maintained, and evaluated by Bard undergraduate students during the months of June to October 2025. It is an organic outdoor laboratory with 20 garden beds, each 17’ x 3’, containing 50 different plant varieties. Students made observations every day and evaluated each plant for a variety of characteristics. Four “New Product Candidates” were specifically evaluated closely for this project. Preliminary conclusions and suggestions for additional research were concluded. Overall best performance was observed by the following vegetable varieties: Bean, Stringless Green Pod; Cucumber, Sweet Success Hybrid; Kallard, Sweet Caroline Hybrid; Lettuce, Little Gem; Peas, Super Sugar Snap; Hot Pepper, Big Guy Hybrid; Sweet Pepper, First Taste; Summer Squash, Burpee’s Best Hybrid; Tomato, Fourth of July; Tomato, Sunpeach; Turnip, Tokyo Sakura Heart; Watermelon, Mini-Me Hybrid. Overall best performance was observed by the following flower varieties: Celosia, Red Velvet Cake, Cosmos, Orange Glow; Gallardia, Golden Beauty, Marigold Strawberry Blonde, Sunflowers, Desire Red Hybrid and Fun N Sun Blend; Verbena, Vanity; Zinnia Cut & Come Again, Queeny Lemon Peach, State Fair and White Wedding. NARRATIVE Introduction The Burpee Trial Garden is a new initiative at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, that is designed to test and grow new and experimental flowers, vegetables, and herb seeds. It provides educational opportunities for hands-on gardening and scientific evaluation for field-proven