The Story Behind Benary’s Patent-Pending Pentas

In floriculture, blue tones often come from the pink and lavender side of the spectrum.

Benary’s StreetArt™ blue Pentas is different.

“The blue Pentas approaches lavender from the blue side of the color wheel,” says David Czarnecki, breeding manager for Benary. “The tone is so unique that we’ve decided to apply for a patent on it.”

Breeding blue flowers is notoriously difficult, and the Pentas has proven that to be true yet again.

Chasing Blue

Czarnecki took over Benary’s Pentas breeding program just over eight years ago, stepping into a long-standing pursuit of breeding a blue Pentas. “Achieving a blue flower is usually one of a breeder’s biggest goals,” he says.

The company had the color in its germplasm for quite some time, but he had to do some breeding and refinement to get this shade of blue to where it is now. He focused specifically on the three fundamentals of breeding: performance, germination, and producibility.

“I’d find varieties that were passing producibility thresholds, but they didn’t look blue, bloom correctly, or hold their color,” he says. “There’s always something when you go after a variety that’s special and new.”

One of the most prominent challenges he encountered was the Pentas’ low sun tolerance. After prolonged sun exposure, he found that the color of the Pentas faded and its leaves would bleach out and scald.

This posed an interesting challenge, as Pentas thrives in warm climates.

An Unexpected Discovery

“The Pentas is a heat-loving crop, so you’ll see it doing well in places in the South and Southeast,” he says. “I saw it do things in Florida that I did not expect.”

When flowers start to “blush” or turn pink, it’s considered an undesirable trait for breeders. Czarnecki witnessed a similar effect on the Pentas, but on the blue side of the color wheel. Rather than turning more pink, he says, their blue hue became more prominent.

“At one of our professional growing locations in Florida, our Pentas started ‘bluing,’ or turning more blue,” he says. “I’m not going to promise growers that this will always happen, but I can say that I saw this happen in a Pentas’ ideal growing environment by an experienced grower.”

While the blue Pentas is a perfect crop for the growing conditions in the South and Southeast, it can still be grown in northern parts of the U.S.

“If you’re a capable grower in the North and get the Pentas at the right time, it will put on a show at the end of the growing season,” Czarnecki says. “It will grow and it will perform throughout the season, but it won’t really make a statement until the end of the summer when it’s about to get cold.”

For that reason, he says, northern growers would be smart to keep the plant in a container and give it more time to develop before it’s sent to a commercial garden center.

Red, White, and Bloom

Ideally, a customer would purchase a blue Pentas on Memorial Day weekend and it would last them through Labor Day.

“Retailers are drawn to the patriotic holidays in the summertime with Memorial Day, Flag Day, the Fourth of July, and Labor Day,” Czarnecki says. “It’s exciting for us to get all three of those colors in a Pentas, and the flower really serves as a summer starter and stopper.”

Growers can kick off the 2026 summer season by planting a StreetArt™ blue Pentas this Memorial Day.

Bringing the Blue Pentas to the Market

While the StreetArt™ Pentas is available this season, Benary plans to add an experimental lavender blue Pentas to its popular Graffiti® collection next year.

The Graffiti® lavender blue Pentas was first introduced at CAST in March, but it’s currently targeted for a 2027 release—Czarnecki is curious to see how the market will respond to it.

“It’ll be interesting to see how much growth it will add and how it affects our position as a company,” Czarnecki says. “If we sold 1,000 seeds for example, does this mean we’ll sell 1,200 or 2,000 by adding this new variety? Ideally, some growers will shift their focus away from some of our competitors and on to us.”

There are currently 17 colors in Benary’s Graffiti® series—the blue Pentas makes 18. Most of the colors fall on the red side of the color wheel, leaving blue colors largely underrepresented. If growers start shifting toward blue tones, it would make it easier for Benary to consolidate the Graffiti® series, and allow Czarnecki to start introducing other new colors to the market.

“I look at the Graffiti® series as our proving ground because it’s the oldest program we have,” he explains. “I believe it’s the most significant Pentas class on the market. Whenever we add a new color to Graffiti®, it gives us the opportunity to see how it’s really going to perform.”

For years, red and white have anchored the summer season. Now, growers can complete the trifecta with a StreetArt™ blue Pentas.