Thanks for the info. I'll wait until spring to see what the garden centers have. I'll look for the wave varieties.

Please don't confine your choices to just Waves. These types of petunias are a hybrid line of bedding petunia crosses against a more vigorous wild petunia and every seed company has jumped into the game after Waves proved their worth. I have grown the spreading petunia since Waves hit the market and have trialed a lot of the other spreaders as they were introduced. One of the first competing series were the Ramblin' and they were the first to offer some colour choice like salmon and red. Last year I offered Opera pink and it was perhaps the prettiest of any spreading petunia I've grown.

I'm not trying to talk you out of mail order, but agree with Rhizo.......almost every local source will offer a type similar to Waves and often in a cheaper multipack. In fact it's hard to even find the traditional old fashion bedding petunia anymore. Another misconception is that if it isn't in a bubblegum pink wave container it isn't a wave. I never used those product specific packages and lots of growers don't. Waves can come in generic packages. It just added to the production costs.

If you are into growing things from seed, it is very easy to collect the seeds from Wave petunias. Besides the ones that I start from seed in white, red and purple, I have them come up all over on their own. I just move them into different pots as they pop up.

Calliope, I was going to kidnap you to address this question. You are THE expert, that's for sure... having grown bedding plants professionally for many years.

As to growing more petunias from seeds obtained from the spreading type plants......we all know that the results may not exhibit those of the parent plants. That won't mean they won't be pretty or not worth saving. It just means that the plants produced will not be consistant in size and character one from the other. Not all attributes relate to appearance of the flower, they may vary in size, tidy-ness, bloom size, spread and of course if open pollinated colour. I often get tiny petunia plants coming up in the greenhouses under the basket and potted stock. I may have all sorts of varieties and cultivars, from mini-flowered and tiny plants to hedgifolias. Last year, I let a few of them grow on just out of curiosity and two were just darling. One of the was the exact shade of dusty purple as a Plum Pudding poinsettia. It may have come off the Picobella miniature line but was taller and more open, I have no clue what it pollinated against. I have no intention of asexually propagating it or continuing the line, just saying if you do have chance seedlings off spreading petunias, it's a crap shoot, sometimes worth growing on, sometimes not...but it 'ain't' genetically like its parents.