Proven Winners designated its first Proven Winners Botanical Trail, naming Kentucky’s Rockcastle River Trading Co. the first such property in the nation.

A designated Proven Winners Botanical Trail exemplifies a property that successfully integrates Proven Winners plants as a complement to the natural landscape, while respecting local landscape tradition and indigenous plant material.

Rockcastle River Trading Co. is a home and garden store located on the family property and boyhood home of Jon Carloftis.  Author of Beautiful Gardens of Kentucky, Beyond the Windowsill and First a Garden, Carloftis is an award-winning garden designer, garden writer, television guest, author and lecturer.

The Botanical Trail will open with a ribbon cutting ceremony on June 13.  The public is invited to hear the history of the location and the plants that make up the trail June 14.

An hour drive south of Lexington to Livingston, Ky., Rockcastle River Trading Co.’s gardens, designed by Carloftis, have been featured in BMW Magazine, Country Home, Garden & Gun, Outdoor Rooms and Southern Living. Complementing the grounds is a newly created series of walking trails that meander along the Rockcastle River and that were part of the wilderness road once traveled by Daniel Boone. Intended to be somewhat of a plant adventure, many of the newest selections of Proven Winners plants are designed and integrated into focal points along the trails.

“I grew up with a tremendous respect for the beautiful native Kentucky landscape,” Carloftis says. “Using so many Proven Winners plants in my landscape projects, and seeing their exceptional performance, I was attracted to the Proven Winners Botanical Trail concept as a way to showcase their beauty and yet still maintain a respect for the native surroundings.”

Beginning this spring, the existing gardens on the Carloftis property will be supplemented with some of the latest introductions from Proven Winners, including Decadence ‘Blueberry Sundae’ Baptisia and ‘Bottle Rocket’ Ligularia.