How "Green" and Sustainable is our Green Industry?

The Topic of the Day at the Mobley Plant Farm Open House Sept. 28 was that Green Industry practitioners really ought to show leadership in adopting sustainable practices, and they invited some great speakers and had terrific demos and workshops to examine this point. As a working definition for sustainability, “Meeting the current needs without eliminating the potential for the future to meet theirs” was used.

Dr. Allan Armitage emphasized “the right plant in the right place” concept, naming plant favorites from his UGA Test Gardens that withstand the local climate without pampering. Sustainability is not a fad but is here to stay, he noted, citing trends including color, containers, low maintenance and recycling. He is a big proponent of Mobley Greensleeves, a paper sleeve surrounding a ball of growing mix that eliminates the need for plastic pots, is faster to plant, saves labor costs and biodegrades in the soil. He called them “sausages” of potting mix (they are bottomless) and said he’s used them successfully in the test gardens for five years. Mobley people go the extra mile to pick up and reuse/recycle the trays they use to deliver Greensleeves plants to their customers.

Another company demonstrating CSR is Garden Debut(R)'s parent company, Greenleaf Nursery Company in Oklahoma, an industry leader with a long history of good environmental stewardship. Their voluntary water recycling program and comprehensive eco-friendly fertilization and insect-management systems received third-party validation and awards from the U.S. EPA: Environmental Excellence and Pollution Prevention Award, the Sierra Club: Earth Care Award and the Environmental Leadership Award from the Southern Nursery Association, all for forward-thinking and voluntary action.


At the open house Dr. Richard Ludwig quoted a study from about 18 months ago showing 46% of landscape customers have zero interest in sustainability; 26% are green washed (green in theory but will not change any behaviors) and 6% will use green practices if they are cheaper or easier than current behavior. This leaves only 20% who actually make an effort to be green and only 2% advocates who have changed their lives based on principles of sustainability.

As an industry, Ludwig continued, we create artificial environments. Despite that hurdle, the new goal is to make them functional; environmentally friendly; cost effective; visually pleasing; and profitable. He urged landscapers/retailers/designers to provide a better customer experience by educating clients to invest in their landscapes, to lower energy costs by smart plant placement, to save water through irrigation technology, and so forth, thereby increasing customer satisfaction and trust. Only then will customers be open to redirection on the matter of sustainable procedures and organic products, which may be a tad more expensive but are better for the community overall.

At the recent 2010 Garden Writers Association annual symposium in Dallas, Keynote Speaker Kierstin De West had discovered a different and more hopeful perspective. De West’s SHIFT Report was based on 5,000 responses from across North America, and she found that people are starting to make lifestyle and purchasing decisions based on integrity and social responsibility. When people feel connected to the community their sustainable behavior increases. I know we are all hopeful that this research predicts the future.

I won a homemade pumpkin pie at Mobley's Open House, so I feel pretty connected. Let me hear what you are doing to connect with your community! 

New Plant Introductions and the First Day of Autumn

The golden Harvest Moon last night was an excellent introduction to the first day of Fall. Although it’s now officially a new season, our weather has not broken and temperatures continue in the mid-nineties, still with no rain. Faced with this sort of challenge, it’s time to revert to catalogs in air conditioning and the new plant introductions appearing in the garden magazines. Garden Debut® will be offering some beautiful new woody ornamentals in Spring 2011, and we’ll hear more about them soon.

As a preview, there is Merlot Redbud, with dark, wine-red merlot-colored leaves and a delightful parentage that enables it to beat this continuing heat and drought. Merlot is the offspring of Forest Pansy Redbud crossed with Cercis canadensis ‘Texensis’! The first parent contributes the dark leaf color, intensified in Merlot, while the second adds a thickness and drought resistance to smaller leaves, enabling this plant to withstand hot dry conditions without a ripple.

Then there is Admiration Barberry, a showstopper with a blaze of orange-red foliage with yellow margins adding plentiful color to the garden pallet. Garden Debut® says this dwarf has a broad, upright growth habit reaching only 12-15 inches tall in 4 years. And though it is a Japanese Barberry, it is non-flowering and therefore there are no worries on spreading by seed.

A host of new plants are in the lineup, all of them thoroughly tested; be sure to visit the website and the Garden Debut® Facebook page for daily news and previews.  

Container Plantings Designed for Fall

Summer annuals have had it, and it’s time to revv up my containers for a fall show. This year I’m adding a bright yellow cushion mum, yellow-chartreuse creeping jenny and a few little ornamental gourds to a container that already holds Nanina for height, a dwarf juniper and some trailing Asiatic jasmine.

After pulling out and composting the annuals, I add fresh potting mix where the root balls formerly grew. For continued growt h of the woodies already growing, I space three plant food spikes evenly around the container and push them down the sides. This adds nutrients to pot bound plants. To keep mold and bacteria from attacking the ornamental gourds I’m setting them on some cork I had left from lining my kitchen cupboards.

I plan to set this container next to a big pumpkin on the front porch, and hope my entranceway will be the cutest on the block through Thanksgiving, when I'll prepare another arrangement to go through winter.

  

Meet & Greet Gardeners, Landscapers, Writers, Designers & Architects

This week I’m headed to an annual conference in Dallas, Tx. Sept. 10-14; to the Garden Writers Association Annual Symposium. Each year GWA travels to a different city, and I expect Dallas will be pretty warm! I’ve been attending on and off for years, so I’m looking forward to seeing about 500 of my closest writer and photographer friends again. The meeting is filled with networking, several tracks of lectures and classes from which to choose, photography sessions, garden tours and public gardens. The Trade Show is always a great treat, and exhibitors bring their newest tools, seeds, books, plants and inventions to share with those that communicate them to the public.

Exhibiting at GWA for the first time, Garden Debut® will be representing a consortium of plant breeders, nurserymen and growers dedicated to the introduction and marketing of new and improved plant varieties for the landscape. They’ll be bringing new plants for 2010 and some not yet released that are slated to appear in 2011. A knowledgeable Rep will be on hand to answer questions. See you at booth #219.

At the very same time, Garden Debut® will be represented at the American Society of Landscape Architects Meeting & Expo held at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center, Washington, D.C. and filled with 6,000+ Landscape Architects from around the world. Workshops, classes, tours and field sessions fill the program.  Tell Jim Thompson from Garden Debut® “Hi” if you go.

September is an extremely busy month for Garden Debut® because the Association of Professional Landscape Designers will hold their 2010 International Design Conference in Dallas Sept. 27-Oct 1 and once again Garden Debut® will exhibit new plants and landscape solutions at that meeting.

Garden Debut® will have information about and examples of new plants already in the 2010 marketplace, as well as plants scheduled for release next year. This is an exciting time in history for the nursery business; with genetics, tissue culture and advances in propagation there are many new and exciting cultivars being evaluated. These plants offer longer blooming seasons, brighter and richer colors, better cold hardiness, variegated leaves, improved fall color or even reduced maintenance. 

Come and see what Garden Debut® has planned for the market with Predictable Quality and superior new plant introductions. 

Photos:

Kokomo Sunset Daylily 2010

Snow Flurries Black Gum 2011

Unusual Variegated-Leaf Shade Tree: Snow Flurries™ Black Gum

 An easy-grow native shade tree in the Dogwood Family, Snow Flurries™ Black Gum is a real attention-getter and selected for its unbeatable summer color, rare in the world of shade trees. Snow Flurries™ has attractive white-edged variegated leaves! The generous white margins surround green centers. Overall, the variegated leaves are narrower and smaller than the species, turning a ruddy color early in fall.

This Garden Debut® introduction is easy-care and trouble-free. Snow Flurries™ is adaptable to an extremely wide variety of soil moisture conditions, from poorly drained soils and low spots subject to periodic flooding, wet, acid bottomlands, through garden soils, to dry sites, aided by its deep tap root. One of its common names, swamp tupelo, is derived from the Native American Creek ito opilwa, meaning swamp tree. Its growth habit is vigorous reaching 30 - 40 feet with gracefully draped lower limbs creating an oval form.  It’s Cold Hardy to – 20 to -30° F. (Zone 4 - 9), and full sun exposure is recommended, but it will grow in part shade.

The genus Nyssa is highly sought after by bee keepers because the multitudes of small flowers of Snow Flurries™ are a great nectar source and attract honey bees, providing excellent bee and butterfly forage and resulting in prized Black Gum or “Tupelo” honey. The honey has a special taste and is non-crystallizing.

Small, dark bluish black, football-shaped fruits are a favorite of birds and wildlife in August - October, and do not stain decks or paving. Black Gum is an important species for non-suburban wildlife of North America: wood ducks, wild turkeys, robins, foxes, and black bears depend on the dark blue fruit as a source of food in the fall.

Black gum has tough wood suitable for tool handles, flooring and railroad cross-ties, while veneer is made from larger trees. Another common name is ‘Pioneer’s Toothbrush’ because broken twigs produce a fibrous bundle of woody strands and were used as tooth brushes.

In landscapes Snow Flurries™ Black Gum (Nyssa sylvatica 'Grechrist') is an attention-getting specimen, excellent native shade tree, adaptable to wet soils. Its clean, variegated leaves are untroubled by pests and disease problems. It is native to wet soils and adaptable to periodic flooding, but grows readily in a wide variety of soils with pH levels of 5-8.

Contact Garden Debut to get a license to propagate and /or sell patented plant parts. 

Sweet Potato Vine; I discovered it flowers!

I’ve had a long love affair with sweet potatoes. As a child, I stuck a regular sweet potato with toothpicks and submerged it halfway in water in a clean pickle jar, then set it on my windowsill and enjoyed watching the green vines grow to frame the window during a long Ohio winter. Later, restaurants served delectable sweet potato chips, and after that our children’s Montessori teacher served raw sweet potatoes as an in-school snack.

About 10 or 12 years ago I came late to visit the UGA Summer Flower Trials in Athens, Georgia. I found everyone gone, but there was still a truck piled with free samples, including a brand new but totally wilted yellow ornamental sweet potato vine. Never dreaming that such wilted cuttings would survive, nevertheless I took a couple and stuck the cut ends in my water bottle for the drive back to Atlanta. By the time I was home, the vines were perky and the leaves all stood erect. They went on to root and grow into a wide mat in the garden that year.

Marguerite sweet potato vine is the chartreuse variety that turns almost yellow in full sun, and takes the hottest sun and abuse, dry, south-facing window boxes, hell strips, or containers set on hot concrete paving, and yet grows luxuriantly. Though wilted in the hot afternoon sun the 6 foot container (left) will be refreshed in the morning, or sooner if it gets some water. 

Marguerite’s original partner, Blacky, (right) had dark, purple-black leaves and has been joined by a new cut-leaf black version called Midnight Lace that was sent to Garden Writers and widely marketed in 2009.

Then this year, imagine my surprise to find some Ipomoea morning glory-type flowers on my Blacky vines! Though small and pale pink, they are the same, familiar, trumpet-style, Convolvulus family flowers. 

Have I been unobservant? I never noticed any flowers before this. What about you? 

Tansy, a Controversial Herb

On my trip to the Rockies I was attracted to a beautiful yellow flower growing alongside a dumpster, and recognized Tansy from herb gardens in Atlanta. My Colorado friend cautioned me that, yes, although it was Tansy, it is considered an invasive exotic weed and not welcomed in the West.

Common Tansy, Tanacetum vulgare is a European herb documented in medieval herbals as a medicinal and culinary plant used as a cure for intestinal worms, aid to rheumatism, digestive problems, fevers, used to heal sores. Meat was frequently rubbed with common Tansy to repel insects and prevent decay. More recently, common Tansy has been cultivated for its insect repellent, disinfectant and preservative effects.

Known for its flat-topped clusters of bright yellow buttons, the disk flowers of Tansy have no ray florets so it looks like the center of a common daisy. Thriving in full sun and well-drained soil, the leaves of common Tansy (or the even more beautiful leaves of fern-leaf tansy) are lovely and can take the place of a fern in a sunny garden.

About 20 years ago I got a recommendation to plant Tansy to repel ants, so I did plant it in an Atlanta herb garden, and confusingly had a large anthill grow up around it. Furthermore, Tansy is toxic in large quantities and is not used medicinally nor for culinary purposes today.

Like Purple Loosestrife, in northern and western regions of the US, common Tansy has escaped from gardens and is considered an invasive exotic weed, even listed as 'noxious' in some states because its many tufted seeds are dispersed by wind and water, while new plants form from even the smallest root fragments, making it hard to eliminate.

I guess it just goes to show that one man's ceiling is another man's floor.

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