The Plant Hunter: Buddleia

Showing posts with label Buddleia. Show all posts

Every Plant Tells a Story

They say that every picture tells a story, but it's also true that every new plant has a story. They have a birthday, one or two parents (depending if the plant is a sport mutation or a seedling). Every plant has a journey to market (or not) that is often filled with trials and tribulations. And some have happy endings and make it to a consumers yard. Here are a few happy stories.

Sunjoy® Mini Salsa Barberry

This barberry was born at Spring Meadow Nursery about 13 years ago. The goal was to create a replacement for 'Crimson Pygmy' barberry, which often reverts to a larger plant. It's common in the nursery business to blame a nursery for mixing up their 'Crimson Pygmy' with a larger form, but it's not a mix-up: it's a whole plant mutation that I have been told may result from a jumping gene. For some reason the switch gets flipped and you get a big 'Crimson Pygmy.' After a long selection process, propagation, field testing, wheat rust testing and getting the results published in the congressional record as a wheat rust resistant variety, the first Sunjoy® Mini Salsa was sold in spring of 2012 and is now common in the garden trade.

Lo & Behold® Purple Haze butterfly bush

Lo & Behold® 'Purple Haze' is a different duck than all the other Lo & Behold Buddleia. Developed by Denny Werner of NCSU, this hybrid selection is a low, wide-spreading variety that makes it a great selection for use as a ground cover or in a decorative container. Like all of the Lo & Behold® series, we had to test it for sterility. It passed the test and can now be sold in Oregon where other Buddleia are banned.

Clematis 'Sweet Summer Love'

When the world-renown clematis breeder Szczepan Marczynski told me he had what amounts to a sweet autumn clematis with red flowers that change to purple and that blooms months earlier, I was all in. The fragrance of sweet autumn clematis is as good as any plant in existence, and the same goes this beauty. Most Clematis can be tricky to grow, with brittle stems that break if you so much as look at them, but this plant is super sturdy and grows like a dream. Anyone can be successful growing this variety. It's as close to perfection as a plant can be.

Clematis 'Sweet Summer Love'

The plant in this picture is a three year old plant in our test garden. The first year you plant it, it does not do much besides grow roots. The next year it takes off, however, it is much more restrained than sweet autumn clematis and does not litter the garden with unwanted seedlings. This plant has what it takes to be the best-selling clematis of all time, you can mark my words. It won a DGA Green Thumb award for the best new plant of 2014 and I expect it to earn many more awards and accolades as people get to know it.

Dr. Roderick Woods

If you read my blog, then you already know Dr. Roderick Woods. The plant he is holding is Blue Chiffon™. This plant just blows me away. All his plants in the Chiffon™ series blow me away. Just look at the picture below, which I took at the nursery this summer:

Blue Chiffon™ rose of Sharon

The Chiffon™ Hibiscus are the heaviest blooming rose of Sharon you will find, and Blue Chiffon is the clearest blue color ever. I was never a big rose of Sharon fan until I started growing the Chiffon series and now I'm a believer. This series comes in blue, white, lavender and pink. If you want to read the full story behind these plants and the fascinating man that created them follow this link.

Paraplu® Hydrangea macrophylla

I'm a bit biased when it comes to Paraplu® Hydrangea because it is a plant that I developed. It was a total accident that came out of a breeding project to develop variegated flowered hydrangeas. All of the plants in this particular cross had doubled florets and thick plastic-like leaves, but none of the seedlings had variegated flowers. This plant was the best of the lot so we introduced it. Paraplu is typically a bright pink but can be easily turned to a rich purple by treating it with aluminum sulfate. Sometimes, mistakes can make for great plants.

Tiny Tuff Stuff™ Hydrangea serrata

Tiny Tuff Stuff™ is another plant out of our breeding program here at Spring Meadow. I love Hydrangea serrata because they are so bud hardy and bloom reliably. Again, I got lucky when I discovered that this plant is a rebloomer. It has smaller, narrower leaves and an abundance of dainty flowers that cover the plant every summer. It has never failed to bloom here in our Michigan trial gardens.

Bobo® Hydrangea paniculata

Even a blind squirrel finds a nut sometimes, and that's how I feel about Bobo hydrangea. I had no idea how good this plant was until it spent a few years in our trialing program. I knew it was a good container plant, but I soon discovered it was an even more remarkable garden plant that simply glows in the landscape. It is compact and dwarf in habit, and the flowers cover every inch of the plant right down to the ground. I have no doubt this will be a very popular landscape plant. This plant comes from Johan Van Huylenbroeck, the same breeder that developed Pinky Winky® hydrangea.

Invincibelle® Spirit Hydrangea arborescens

I have already told the story of Invincibelle® Spirit Hydrangea, but the longer you grow a plant, the more you learn. What I've learned is that this plant is simply incredible once it has reached full maturity. This takes about 3 years, so be patient and you will be well rewarded. I've also learned that it needs to be grown in full sun to look its best. People think that hydrangeas are shade plants, and some are, but Hydrangea arborescens develops stronger stems and bigger, brighter flowers when grown in full sun.

Last year we introduced Invincibelle® Spirit II (Two) which will replace the original. This new improved "2.0" version has stronger stems, richer flower color and healthier foliage. We are all used to cell phones and computer software getting updates, but plants can get updated as well.

Oso Easy® Double Red Rose

We work with about six different roses breeders, and we put all their roses through the gauntlet to find the very best varieties. In our trials, we spray no fungicides at all, and we overhead irrigate to actually encourage black spot and mildew. We test these roses in the greenhouse and in the garden and after three or four years, most of our test plants end up on the trash heap. Oso Easy® Double Red rose was one of the few varieties that passed the test and it came through with flying colors. Developed by noted rose breeder Alain Meilland of France, this rose is not only highly disease resistant, it is also prized for its perpetual blooming. Visitors to our test garden confirmed our opinions of this rose by picking it as one of their favorites. It has only been on the market for less than a year so be patient, it will be coming to a garden center near you very soon.

Oso Easy® Double red is the perfect flowering shrub for landscapes. Here a mass planting is providing a big splash of color in a park in Switzerland.

Oso Happy® Candy Oh! Rose

Year after year Oso Happy® Candy Oh! continues to amaze me. No diseases, an abundance of blooms and it always looks happy. No, it does not have massive, highly doubled flowers, but that should not matter. It is a great shrub that offers lots of color with little to no effort. You can read the back story on this rose here.

Blue Diddley® dwarf Vitex

Commonly known as the chastetree, Vitex agnus-castus was in ancient times thought to be an anaphrodisiac. According to Wikipedia, the leaves and stems were once used in ladies' bedding to "cool the heat of lust" when the men were off to war, thus the name chastetree. I'm not so sure if this works or not, but I do know that it makes a wonderful landscape plant that is highly deer and drought resistant. Blue Diddley® Vitex makes the plant even better with its dwarf stature that is about half the size of typical vitex. In the north, zones 5-6, this plant acts like a perennial and dies back to the ground, but regrows and flowers much like a butterfly bush. It is slow to break bud in the spring, so do not panic if the plant looks dead, it will sprout new shoots and make a fine specimen in due time.

A Peak Into the Future

One of the fun things about working at a wholesale, liner (starter plant) nursery is that you get to see into the future. That's because the new plant varieties we sell today don't hit retail stores until after our customer's grow them a year or two into larger retail-sized plants. So when I analyse our current orders, I get a glimpse of what will be in garden centers in a year or two.

Would you like to see into the future? Here is a top ten countdown of our top selling new plants. Click on the picture if you want to learn more about the plant.

Kodiak™ Orange Diervilla

Infinitini™ Brite Pink Crape Myrtle

Double Play® Red Spirea

Let's Dance® Rave Hydrangea

Brass Buckle™ Japanese Holly

Invincibelle® Spirit II

Zinfin Doll™ Hydrangea paniculata

Lo & Behold® 'Blue Chip Jr' Buddleia

Little Quick Fire® Hydrangea paniculata

Bloomerang® Dark Purple Lilac

Award Winning New Plants at Plantarium

Every year plant breeders from around the world bring their best new plants to the Plantarium in the Netherlands. The best of the best win either bronze, silver or gold medals. With over 150 new plants being introduced, winning an award is very difficult so even those plants that receive a bronze medal are very fortunate. Here are a few of the best new plants of 2014-2015. What's your favorite?

The yellow flowered Sunny Anniversary wins a silver medal

Denny Werner's Buddleia Lo & Behold Pink Micro Chip wins a silver

Caluna 'Silvia' wins a bronze

Campsus Orangeade wins a bronze

Campsus Summer Jazz Fire wins gold

Echinacea lMooodz Shiny wins a bronze

Helenium Fuego wins a bronze

Hydrangea Miss Saori wins a bronze

Nepeta Purssian Blue wins a bronze

Tiny Wine dwarf Physocarpus wins a silver medal

Lemony Lace Sambucus wins a bronze medal to go along with it's two Far-West awards

Bert Verhoef's All Summer Red Weigela wins a silver

The Times They Are a-Changin’

“Come gather 'round people wherever you roam
and admit that the waters around you have grown
and accept it that soon you’ll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you is worth savin'.

Then you better start swimmin' or you'll sink like a stone
for the times they are a-changin'.” -Bob Dylan

I’m sure that Bob Dylan wasn't writing about the nursery business when he wrote these iconic lyrics, but nothing better sums up what’s going on in the world of plants and in particular the world of shrubs. Surely, the times they’re a changin'! To illustrate this change, just get in your car and drive around some neighborhoods, both new and old, and note how the landscapes have evolved in relation to the age of the homes. With each new generation there has been a dramatic shift in the landscape, the way plants are used and the type of plants being used.

Homeowners want more color. The yews and junipers are gone.

Color has increased; perennials and flowering shrubs have replaced yews and junipers that were once so common. There’s been an overall increase in plant diversity; the ubiquitous crab apple and blue spruce have been replaced with a myriad of plant species. And as homes have become larger and lots smaller, people no longer have the space for big, old-fashioned shrubs. At first glace one might jump to the conclusion that shrubs have seen their day, but in light of societal changes and new breeding efforts I believe that shrubs are actually the beginning of a renaissance.

As the Product Development Manager at Spring Meadow Nursery, my search for new plants takes me around the world, and I get to meet a wide array of professional and amateur plant breeders. I have the rare opportunity to see what will be new four or five years before the rest of the industry. As a plant geek and horticulturist, I get excited when I see that one-of-a-kind new plant. It’s like searching for buried treasure, but my task requires that I exercise restraint and show good judgment. I search for plants that meet the needs homeowners. To sort through all these new plants and to help me make sound introduction decisions, I've developed an internal plant selection criteria that helps me focus on those plants the non-horticulturists would want to buy. We have a clear vision for shrubs, and our goal is to reinvent the way people view and use them. Here is a sampling of what I look for when searching for new shrubs.

Shrubs as Perennials

Shrubs are no longer just the bones of the garden

Botanically speaking, shrubs are perennials - they just happen to have woody stems, but in laymen’s terms people view perennials as herbaceous plants with colorful flowers. Shrubs, on the other hand, have been viewed as the backbone of the garden: something green to plant in the background. This is not my view. Plant breeders are developing new shrubs that are blurring our traditional lines of plant classification. MY MONET™ (Weigela f. ‘Verweig’), LO & BEHOLD® butterfly bushes, and OSO HAPPY® PETIT PINK rose are all examples of miniature shrubs that look more like perennials.

OSO EASY® PETIT PINK rose is an award winning, hardy rose that stays very small.

Gardeners and landscapers use them like perennials in borders, decorative containers and mass plantings. While these shrubs fill the same niche as perennials, they don’t require the same level of maintenance. There is no need for deadheading, dividing, or staking. You don’t have to cut them back in autumn or spring. I recently read an article that described shrubs as the lazy man’s perennial, and there’s truth to that. People complain about a lack of time in this day and age, so the future for small and miniature shrubs is very promising.

Colorful Foliage

Colorful, and interesting foliage, like you get with LEMON LACE™ Sambucus adds garden interest.

Some years back, I was responsible for producing over a million perennials. The goal of the program was to provide retailers with bud and bloom perennials. Everyone knows that perennials sell a whole lot better when they’re in bloom, but unfortunately, most only bloom for four to six weeks. It was a very difficult task shipping all these perennials before the blooms had expired while building weekly assortments with sufficient amounts of color. The lesson I learned was that plants with colorful foliage could be sold every week, all season long. I could always count on Hosta, Heuchera, Artemisia, and Pulmonaria to ship every week. These same benefits were passed on to retailers and gardeners – colorful foliage looks good all season long in the garden center and the garden. The same lesson can be applied to shrubs: shrubs with colorful foliage have a longer selling season, and when they do flower, it’s icing on the cake.

CRÈME FRAICHE™ Deutzia

Over the last ten years, we have seen a wide array of new shrub introductions with attractive, colorful foliage. CRÈME FRAICHE™ (Deutzia gracilis ‘Mincream’), TINY WINE® (Physocarpus o. ‘SMPOTW'’), BLACK LACE™ (Sambucus nigra ‘Eva’) and WINE & ROSES® (Weigela f. ‘Alexandra’) are just a few. Again, everyone benefits from the season-long color provided by these shrubs.

Shrubs with Unique Architecture

The narrow architecture of SUNJOY® GOLD PILLAR Berberis opens up new uses in the landscape.

Some years back, I received a call from Gary Koller, a well-respected garden designer in the Boston area. Gary urged me to find and offer more shrubs with narrow, columnar growth habits. In his opinion, we needed plants with a smaller footprint that took up less space in the landscape. He also felt these shrubs added interesting architecture to gardens. The trend toward smaller home lots dictates the need for smaller and/or narrower shrubs. After all, who has the space for a Spiraea x ‘Vanhouttei’ in their garden anymore?

NORTH POLE® Thuja is a very narrow, fast growing evergreen.

Narrower shrubs have another great benefit: they require less care and maintenance. Growers spend less time spacing and pruning them which saves them money. Homeowners also benefit from these shrubs as they save them both time and effort. SKY POINTER® (Ilex crenata ‘Farrowone’), CASTLE WALL™ (Ilex x meserveae ‘Hechenstar’), FINE LINE® (Rhamnus frangula ‘Ron Williams’) and NORTH POLE® arborvitae (Thuja) are a few narrow plants that have seen increased popularity over the last few years. I suspect this trend will continue.

Multiple Seasons of Interest

For most people, the yard and garden space has become much too valuable for plants that only shine a few weeks of the year. People want and expect more than three to four weeks of flowers. Colorful foliage addresses this need quite well, but shrubs with interesting fruit and fall color fit the bill. BRANDYWINE™ (Viburnum nudum ‘Bulk’) is a good example of a shrub that earns its keep. It has extremely glossy green foliage, attractive white flowers, rich burgundy red autumn foliage, and an outstanding fruit display that starts out green, changes to pink, then transforms to blue. And while the species typically requires a second cultivar to cross pollinate in order to fruit, this cultivar does not. Its flowers are self-compatible, and thus it fruits abundantly without a pollinator. It’s a work-horse of a shrub that gives season long pizzazz.

Flowers, fruit, form and fall color make BRANDYWINE™ Viburnum a plant with seasons of interest.

Shrubs that rebloom, by their very nature, offer multiple seasons of interest. With the success of plants like ‘Stella d’Oro’ daylily and Endless Summer® hydrangea, we have continued to look for shrubs that rebloom. BLOOMERANG® Lilac (Syringa x. ' Penda’) starts blooming in May, rests in June, starts flowering again in July, and continues non-stop until frost. SONIC BLOOM™ weigela blooms and reblooms continuously without dead-heading. It just keeps on flowering!

Superior Performance and Ease of Care

It should be noted that no matter how colorful, how sexy, or how big the flowers, everyone expects that a plant will perform. Long gone are the days when people were willing to spray their plants to keep them healthy. Just look at the rose market - Knock Out®, Oso Easy®, and Home Run® roses do not have the big, showy flowers of a ‘Queen Elizabeth’ rose, yet they’re in high demand because they’re easy to grow. People want plants that are going to live – and that they can count on. Sure there will always be die-hard gardening enthusiasts who enjoy the challenge of growing Himalayan blue poppies, but according to the National Gardening Association, 81% of the population is comprised of casual, reluctant, and non-gardeners. It’s unfortunate, but most of these people do not know how to prune a shrub or amend soil pH, and they have no desire to learn. If we want to sell plants to the majority of the population, we have to give them plants that are easy to grow. New shrub breeding is providing just that.

PINK HOME RUN® roses add lots of color with little effort.

The Future looks Very Bright

As you can see, plant breeders are reinventing shrubs to meet the needs of today’s growers, retailers, landscapers, and gardeners. European breeder rights laws, as well as U.S. plant patents, have given breeders greater incentive to develop new shrubs, and the pace is quickening, but new is not necessarily better. The patent books are full of plants that no one wants. It takes a lot more than larger flowers to be successful in today’s market. People are demanding more. And like Bob says, “The times they are a-changin,” and so are shrubs. In my view, they’re no longer just the bones of the garden – new shrubs are changing the way we grow, sell, garden, and landscape. The future looks very bright indeed!

New Plant pics: Holland 2012

Here is a quick pictorial of some of the new plants that I ran across on my last trip to the Netherlands. We saw some pretty cool plants. What do you like?