Nearly 30 years ago I joined a tour of the research greenhouses at Penn State. The only thing that stayed in my memory was a beautiful plant, which in my opinion proved to be a garden flop.

The plant looked like a geranium on steroids. It was about twice the size of the common zonal geranium. The leaves were likewise size exaggerated. The flowers were huge and generally bi-colored, favoring the range through reds, pinks and purples.

I think then they were called Martha Washington geraniums. I'm not sure what happened to Martha, but more recently they are usually called regal geraniums.

Before I forget it, the tour was in the late winter or early spring.

When I first saw them, the flowers made them a 'must have' plant. My first effort in April and early May looked just like what I had seen at Penn State. A lot of them found their way into my garden and in late May, June, July, August and most of September I had giant geraniums without a flower in sight.

As frost neared I remember a few flowers. I tried at least three years before I concluded that they were one of those beautiful early spring plants that belonged in the compost pile, not the garden, once the flowers started to fade.

Needless to say, last July as I strolled through the flower trials near Landisville, I stopped short when I saw them again. Only this time they were blooming beautifully. Over the years the researchers have mitigated the plant's problem. Historically, they refused to initiate buds once nighttime temperatures climbed past 50 degrees.

The 2007 edition was in full bloom in the heat of the summer. There will be a spot in my garden for a few of them again this year.

Another plant that I have had a nearly similar experience with is the Cape Daisy or Osteospermum. This one traces its nativity to New Zealand and Australia, which has a more maritime climate. That's less cold in the winter and less heat in the summer.

They appeared at least 10 years ago and the story is similar to that of the above geranium with some exceptions. They bloomed a bit later into the spring and were slow to succumb to the cold of late fall.

In other words, they started full of blooms, were green in the summer and bloomed quite well long after most annuals were killed. One year they held out until Christmas. That year I also cut fresh cauliflower out of the garden the week before Christmas.

Several years ago the breeders introduced a wide-petal series that blooms in the yellow and orange range. This group blooms well in the summer, but gives up a bit in hardiness at both ends of the season.

At the trials last year there were varieties of the original white to purple ones, with more narrow petals, that were blooming in the heat of the summer. It's a bit early to determine whether this new generation has hardiness equal to the early ones.

That's it. Two plant series that were in my garden, were discarded and will be back in 2008. If I plant them in 2009, I'll say time and research has produced some winning annuals.