By improved I mean new cultivars, perhaps for beauty, color, disease resistance, etc...

My suggestions are mostly for color and size.

Take Plantain and Dandelions.

I would like to see giant dandelions with large yellow or orange flowers, they are pretty in spring but the small size is a downfall getting lost among tall grass, and flowers don't last long.

Plantain leaves when cared for get quite large, the flowers on stalks are inconspicuous, but if you look closely they are pink or white. Now imagine flower stalks the thickness of sausages and flowers as large as US quarters or silver dollars in pink and white, among the large leaves as big as hosta leaves, that's a Plantain Id love seeing in my garden!

In general for any flower, variegated leaves with variegated flowers all on one plant. Some flowers I think exist like this, but not many.

More hosta flower colors than purple or white, and red leaves hosta.

Bumping this

I would love to see more heuchera such as this with multi-color leaves.

I'd like to see more Heuchera cultivars with showy blooms. I like those with colorful foliage, but I still love the old fashioned coral bells with those graceful sprays of little pink blooms.

On that same mode of thought, I too would love to see hybridization work toward showier blooms on Hostas.


Ground Ivy is such a pest for me, but it is an attractive little ground cover. I'd love to see a tamed down version, perhaps with larger blooms. The sea of blue it could potentially provide would be beautiful.

I would love to see Gerbera daisies breed for better viable seed production!

I have always thought that Chicory (the blue flowered kind growing along roadsides) could be a wonderful plant for the perennial border. I let it grow in with common dayliles (H. fulva) and the colors are spectacular together. But the blue flowers fade so early in the day....if someone could select for a cultivar that kept its flowers all day, that would be great. I also see pink and white chicory here and there in my area, so a range of colors could be possible. This may be my retirement plan.....