It’s always nice to find some really neat looking plants, something new, ones that really have some inspiration behind them. Looking at the same old plant material year after year — not so good.
A few weeks ago, another nurseryman “gifted” me with two new catalogues from a nursery that has spent a lot of time creating specific new varieties of plants. Simply by cross-pollinating different North American native plant species and growing their seeds up to evaluate the new cultivars, they have created this one of a kind plant material. From there, the new plant varieties are evaluated on characteristics like growth habit, leaf and/or flower colour. This can take several years. Selected varieties are propagated by tissue culture for further build up and release into the nursery trade. If you had the time and the inclination, this could be a lot of fun and very rewarding work.
Purple, yellow, orange, green and red leaves. Flowers, yes, but the foliage is so eye catching you might not even notice. I am speaking of heucheras. They are compact, well behaved plants widely adapted to different soil types, except ones with poor drainage. They don’t require much in the way of fertilizers or spray. They can be grown in the sun or part-shade. They work well in a flowerbed or as a real stand out in a container garden. Plant the crowns high and allow them to settle in.
Last year, I wrote about a new pink-berried blueberry variety, Pink Lemonade. We had a few of them in the nursery this past year but I don’t believe we sold any of them. No worries; they will have grown some more and should have some fruit on them for the coming spring.
A veteran garden centre consultant was speaking about the difference between cutting edge and having something so new it is on the “bleeding edge”, too new to have any market for it. I recall well trying to sell grasses 10 years ago. I had my four favorites in the nursery for sale but I couldn’t give them away so after a few seasons I just planted them out back. A few years later, one of the grasses, Feather Reed grass won perennial of the year. Now we see grasses all over the landscape in Cranbrook and south through Coeur d’Alene. They are native plants, too. In any case, they look great and people just needed to learn how to use them in their landscapes. Nowadays we sell all kinds of them.
This year had been appointed the Year of the Heuchera by the National Garden Bureau. Their future looks really bright.
In the meantime, stay tuned for future information on the 2013 perennial of the year and more.
Evan Davies owns Beltane Nursery at 2915 Highway 3 in Erickson.