2/02-05 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE For more information contact: Christine Kelleher, 800-232-9557, Ext. 512 or Gary Doerr, 916-716-1889

With its stunning raspberry and white flowers and luscious green foliage, Coreopsis rosea 'Sweet Dreams' hardly looks like a bug, much less a tick. Ironically, Coreopsis means bug in Latin. The carefree, dependable Coreopsis also produce a tick-shaped seed, which has brought it the popular common name of "Tickseed."

All this seems hardly fair to a plant that created so much excitement in university field trials this past growing season and will be launched by Blooms of Bressingham U.K. at the Royal Horticultural Society's renowned Chelsea Flower Show in London this May. Usually it is the other way around. A British perennial is displayed at Chelsea and then comes to North America. In this case you have a North American plant going to England.

This striking new Coreopsis has large bi-colored flowers of white, flushed soft pink with dark raspberry-colored centers held above fine needle-like foliage. Under intense light, the raspberry color spreads farther on the ray petals, developing a slowly changing color pattern as summer progresses. The daisy flowers are 1 to 1-1/2 inches in diameter and provide a lot of flower power, blooming from late spring until frost. The removal of spent flowers will encourage continuous blooming. 'Sweet Dreams' forms a bushy mound from a central crown, growing to 18 inches tall by 24 inches wide, and prefers well-drained soil in full sun, tolerating dry conditions once established. Ideal to plant in groups of three or more plants to form a broad mass of color. Flowers are attractive to bees and butterflies. USDA Hardiness Zones 4 to 9, AHS Heat Zones 12 to 1.

Mark Leonard of Loomis, Calif., discovered 'Sweet Dreams' at his nursery near Sacramento. Leonard spotted an unusual flower growing among a bed of Coreopsis rosea. The flower was one-third larger than the size of other members of the Coreopsis family with white-tipped petals and a dark raspberry eye. Amazingly, it was just a single stem growing from one plant of an ordinary Coreopsis rosea. Mark managed to take cuttings from this single shoot, stocks were built up and the plant was successfully trialed and introduced in North America and now the U.K.

Pictures available.