Virginia rose, I can answer your question about new plants. A nursery near me gets the Terra Nova plants and others a few years before they are introduced and available to us. I went back to where they are trialing the plants and took some pictures. I think it's terrific that they trial plants in harsh places like Kansas, because if they can survive our extremes, that's a good sign. Of course, there's other criteria, such as insects and diseases that we don't have, so a plant I think is great may not be so great when they trial it in Oregon or Pennsylvania.
I bought some big beautiful bright orange petunias, yes petunias, not calibrochoa, and saw some other cool phlox that will be out in a few years.
Kansas State University horticulture department runs plant trials under no irrigation, and I've seen all sorts of new plants under study at Oklahoma State in Stillwater. We have some trial fields in Wichita, too. I would never garden under the extreme conditions they use for trials. They only get rainwater!
