The Dallas Arboretum became one of my all-time favorite public gardens after just one visit. Jimmy Turner, the

Director of Horticulture Research & the Garden Designer has a real knack for creating fabulous color combinations. He has a huge Texas-size palette put to work.

The Dallas Arboretum includes a botanical garden encompassing 66 acres of mature trees, annual and perennial borders alongside sweeping lawns, and water in the forms of sculpture, falls, streams, and formal ponds all bordering a small lake. The seasonal displays are Texas sized.

Jimmy’s list of adaptable plants is truly trialed by the fire of heat and humidity in the Texas Prairie and Lakes region. His mantra, "If we can’t kill it, no one can," speaks to all of us who have grown plants both shockingly amazing and miserably deficient.

Some of Jimmy’s Rising Stars, as he calls them, include many of my own favorites. See if you have a place to highlight these new and tough plants, most offered by Park Seed:

Hybrid Cleome Senorita Rosalita™ PPAF. This is a hybrid spider flower more tolerant of heat than its ancestors are. You cannot grow it from seed, however. Purchase it as a cutting-grown plant. Look for it in larger pots than a normal annual bedding plant.

Annual ‘Cora’ Vinca is a Madagascar periwinkle that blossoms all summer. White Cora was a winner in my hot garden last summer.

Pentas ‘New Look’ is a treasure of starflowers that blooms happily in shade or sun, in pots or in the ground.

‘Diamond Frost’ Euphorbia is an exceptional plant. Jimmy has dubbed it "Flame Proof", his highest accolade for a trial flower that withstands all that a Texas summer throws at it (South Carolina, too).

Marigold Zenith series (Tagetes patula x erecta). They stay clean all summer and do not set seed. Large flowers on well-branched plants. I’ll try them.

Zinnia Profusion series resists mildew and leaf spot. A blooming machine.

Pansy Ultima Morpho hybrid is an AAS (All America Selections) winner as well as a Jimmy winner. This little pansy isn’t much larger than a viola, but it is a workhorse in the cool garden; winter in the South and early spring in the North.

The wheelchair accessible Dallas Arboretum is located in Northeast Dallas at 8525 Garland Road on the southeast shore of White Rock Lake. Open daily: 9:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m. Admission: Adults $8.00, Senior (65+) $7.00, Children 3-12, $5.00, Children 2 and under, Free. General Parking, $5.00. For information on valet and free shuttle parking, call 214-515-6500.

Check for the latest admission prices and times before you drop in, just in case there are changes. Do stop in for a visit if you are in the vicinity. It is a worthwhile stopover and a best of all destinations.