A mysterious strain of downy mildew has been killing one of the home gardener’s favorite annual flowers, Impatiens walleriana, up and down the East and West Coasts, in the Midwest, Texas and Ontario.
“We saw it here in 2011 in the fall, and it was really dramatic,” said Margery Daughtrey, a plant pathologist at the Cornell University extension center in Riverhead, N.Y. “Gorgeous plants, flowering two feet tall, and then the flowers start disappearing and leaves drop and stems fall over and then the stems disappear.”
Since then, it has only worsened. Lois Carswell, the co-chair of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden plant sale, which has been held in Click Here for More