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.   

Discovered a New Plant?

Discovering and introducing new plants is not just for professional plant breeders. There have been some really great plants introduced by amateur plants-people. Perhaps the most famous or most successful amateur was Kathleen Meserve of Long Island, New York that developed that Blue Holly by crossing the hardy, low growing Ilex rugosa with the Ilex aquifolium the English Holly.

More recent examples of good new plants introduced by amateurs include Ruby Anniversary Abelia (A. chinensis 'Keiser'). This is a plant that was selected by Susan Keiser of Ossining, New York. Ms Keiser, while not a regular plant breeder, does know a thing or two about plants. She owns and operated Greystone Gardens, a design company that creates high end specialty gardens. One her most famous designs is a terrace garden on third floor of the 10 Rockefeller Plaza. Building rooftop gardens requires an in depth knowledge of plants, so Ms. Keiser is continually testing and evaluating new plants. She selected Ruby Anniversary out a group of seed propagated Chinese Abelia plants in her garden. She noticed that one plant was very different from the rest, as it was fuller in habit and the foliage was much darker than was typical of the species. The new growth also had attractive burgundy coloration. She know she had found a very special plant. Ruby Anniversary Abelia has some other advantages too as it is hardier than Abelia x grandiflora and the flowers are fragrant. It is adored by butterflies!

Bronze Anniversary Abelia is another plant introduced by an amateur. This plant was the the result of a discovered sport mutation on Abelia x grandiflora by Rika Bronsther of Hempstead, Long Island. Ms Bronsther also know a bit about plants. While she is currently employed as a graphic designer, she previously owned and operated a landscape design and build company. She has a great eye for plants and especially sports, or mutations. She is alway on the look out for sports and variegations, or unique seedlings. Ms. Bronsther has introduced a number of outstanding plants including Anemone 'Party Dress' and the Autumn Crescendo Series of Dendrathema (hardy mum).

Bronze Anniversary was selected from a number of yellow leafed sports found by Bronsther. After comparing it her other sports, as well as, the other yellow leafed Abelia cultivar the plant was selected because it had attractive orange coloration on the new growth. It was also the strongest grower, the most floriferous and did not revert as did the other selections. The plant also has a good strong root system compared to many cultivars that do not and thus cause production problems.

Sugar Tip Rose of Sharon (Hibiscus syriacus 'America Irene Scott') was discovered by Sharon Gerlt of Independence, Missouri as sport mutation on a plant growing in her yard. While I get about 4-5 people a year offering me variegated forms of Rose of Sharon, none have been as nice as this plant. Sugar Tip Hibiscus has very attractive, stable variegation. Unlike Hibiscus syriacus 'Pupureus Variegatus' the flower actually open. And unlike other selections I've seen, this plants is easy to grow and has very consistent variegation that's very pleasing to the eye. The soft pink flowers go well with the foliage. This variety is seedless so there is no issue with unwanted seedlings in the garden. In addition, the growth habit is compact and refined.    

Have you discovered a new plant that you think has commercial value. Send me an email at tim@springmeadownursery and I will let you know if your plant is worthy of introduction, how new plants are launched and if the plant is good, earn royalty income on each plant sold. 

Dr. Shim - The Mike Dirr of Korea

Some of you may have read one of my older posts on plant hunting in Korea. It was one of my greatest adventures and it explains how I met Dr. Shim. Well Dr. Shim just spent three days with me at Spring Meadow Nursery. He came to see some of his new Hibiscus syriacus selections that we are evaluating for potential introduction. Dr. Shim developed Lil’ Kim Hibiscus – the first dwarf rose of Sharon. This is a great little shrub that unfortunately is still hard to find. If you can find it give it a try!

I like to call Dr. Shim the Mike Dirr or Korea. For roughly 30 years he was the Professor of Ornamental Horticulture at Sungkyunkwan University, in Suwan just outside of Seoul. Just like Dr. Dirr, Dr. Shim has roots at the University of Illinois. This is where he got his Ph.D., and where spent a year as a visiting professor. He is now retired and spends his time golfing and breeding Hibiscus, Forsythia and Korean Tiger Lilies.

Dr. Shim got into horticulture as a young boy. His family owned a pear orchard. He told me that one of his first jobs was bagging pears. In Korea, pear growers bag the fruit while still on the tree to protect them from insects and disease. Ten women would make bags out of old news papers and each tree would require up to 500 bags. You can image it took a good deal of time to bag every pear in the orchard yet this did not dissuade Dr. Shim from continuing on in horticulture. He went on to study post harvest physiology, just as I had. After working for three and a half years on his Ph.D. in Champaign we retuned home to teach pomology in Korea. In time, his position was changed to ornamental horticulture. The rest is history.

While traveling, looking for new plant is great fun; it’s also a pleasure when breeders come to visit me. We spent two days touring the nursery, looking over new plants, scouting the seed beds for treasures and most importantly evaluating his 20 or so cultivars we have under evaluation. I’m happy to report there are many fine plants and I suspect a few will make it to market in the coming years. The hard part will be narrowing the plants down to the best three or four cultivars. His dwarf Hibiscus selections look great and have the potential to widen the Lil’ Kim line with a broader color range.

As I’ve said before I have a great job. I get to see really cool plants long before anyone can buy them. But the best part of my job is meeting the special people that develop these plants. Dr. Shim is more than just a special plant breeder. He' is a special friend.

Motorcycles, Lumberjacks and Rose of Sharon.

In the horticultural world, Dr. Roderick Woods has become famous for his Hibiscus syriacus (Rose of Sharon, Althea) breeding. But in his previous life, Woods was a world renowned physiologist, scholar and researcher at Cambridge University in England. His path to plant breeder was both unexpected and slow, but fortunately for us plant lovers it has delivered three of the most exciting new plants ever developed; plants with superior vigor that thrive both warm and cool climates and plants with large, unique new flower forms. This is Dr. Woods story:

Born in England during a time of war and growing up during post-war austerity, rather isolated in the country, Roderick Woods amusements centered on plants and animals. His family had a large vegetable and flower garden that provided the cash for extras like holidays. He was therefore drafted early into stone picking, pricking out seedlings and weeding. After school he wanted to go into forestry, but after a spell in a Salk vaccine tissue culture laboratory he was sent off, somewhat reluctantly, to train as a medical doctor. It was soon noted he had an aptitude for microscopy and interpreting structures, so he was diverted into research after his undergraduate degree. Woods earned his living for 32 years thereafter by teaching physiology and histology to medical and veterinary students.

In research he worked on nervous system structure with light and electron microscopes, the foetal development of the lungs and other topics in Oxford, Edinburgh and Cambridge. He then drifted into whole body human physiology and particularly temperature regulation. This research lead him into the esoteric field of accident and injury research and into the field of protective clothing. Most every fire-fighter, motorcyclist, horse rider, Police in riot situations, chain saw user, abattoir worker, fencer, and any other person that works in a dangerous profession, is safer today because of the innovations pioneered of Dr. Woods.

In 2002 Woods retired from teaching and research and moved to Norfolk to concentrate on Hibiscus breeding and running a protective clothing consultancy company, aptly named Blue Hibiscus Limited.

As a young child Woods had three Hibiscus syriacus (Rose of Sharon) plants in the family garden; red, white and blue. They grew slowly but were always appreciated when they flowered in the summer after almost everything else had finished. In 1974 Woods planted his first hibiscus plants in his garden near Cambridge. They never performed like the ones he saw on holiday in France and Italy; growth was slow and coarse and the flowers did not open well. The English climate was just not warm enough or sunny enough! This spurred him on to start collecting other selections on his travels.

It was in 1981, on his journey to plant breeder, that Woods had a life changing experience. He was in the south of France near Biarritz and happened upon an unusual pink Hibiscus plant growing in a roadside hedge that appeared to glow! Captivated by this glowing vision, he decided he must have this variety for his own garden. So upon retuning home to the UK, Woods began searching at local nurseries only to be told that no such variety existed. This led him to seek out and write various Hibiscus collectors all around the world, but again Woods had not luck. Returning to France for further holidays in the following years Woods searched for this glowing pink Hibiscus, but unfortunately the road had been widened and the plant was gone. He searched the local French nurseries and talked to anyone in the area that was growing Hibiscus but again no luck!

In 1988 his quest had lead him to discover a group of pink flowered Rose of Sharon plants that had grown in a near-wild state in some old gardens, farmyards and around churches in one area of the Pyrenees foot-hills. Woods reasoned that bees must have been at work and that if he wanted the true, pure pink Hibiscus he was going to have to be a super-bee. With permission from the locals Woods collected seedlings. The resultant plants were the beginning of Woods new obsession; Hibiscus breeding.

Initially, Woods breeding came with mixed success. He was not able to replicate the clear, glowing pink flowers he had seen in France, but he had discovered that his wild Pyrenees plants resulted in exceptional plant vigor and branching that he never seen before. Most Hibiscus syriacus breeding has its origins in very warm climates such as France. Many of the common cultivars in the US were developed at the National Arboretum outside of Washington DC. While most of these plants grow well in the South, they just don’t grow or flower as well in cooler, Northern climates. They certainly did not flower well in his Cambridge garden.

Woods, like most others that love Rose of Sharon, was fascinated with the cultivar ‘Blue Bird’. Who can resist blue flowers - but ‘Blue Bird’ is a strange bird; weak growing, poorly branched, course and short flowering. Woods wanted to develop a strong growing blue flowered plant an abundance of bloom. Over the years, Woods redirected his scientific skills that had made him famous in human physiology to breeding plants. He learned what to do and his breeding gave rise to very pure colors across the spectrum and plants with unusually strong flowing and growth.

Woods, of course is most famous for his Chiffon series of Hibiscus; exceptionally flowering plants noted for their large, flat single blooms with a lacy center. Until you grow these plants you cannot believe how unique they are in how they grow. While most Rose of Sharon are ridged and uptight, the Chiffons are finer in texture and more shrub-like with lots of basil stems that produce an abundance of flowers.

The origins of the Chiffon series date back to 1986 when Dr. Tachibana at the Osaka Botanic Gardens sent him some seed in response to a correspondence they had concerning the mythical pink Hibiscus. The resulting seedlings were not pink, but contained the doubling genes have gone on to produce Lavender Chiffon, White Chiffon and now three generations later - Blue Chiffon. Woods has now recently returned to single blues to try to incorporate more vigour to the plants and greater flower size.

It has taken Dr. Woods a long time to fully understand flower color and flower form inheritance in Hibiscus. It was considerably more complex than he imagined when he started out.

To date Woods has made over 600 designed and controlled crosses. Some yield much seed on a few attempts, but some, even after 30 or more attempts have failed to set any seed. There are some sterility problems within hibiscus. Remarkably, Woods has flowered over 8300 seedlings yet has only introduced three varieties to the trade! Amongst the un-flowered seedlings in his poly-tunnel he is sure there are another three perfect plants. Plant breeders always think like this and believe their next flower will be the best ever!

While making more crosses and raising more seedlings might produce new flowers more quickly, Woods has found that it is not physically practical for a lone grower to do this. According to Wood’s, “…from what I have learned from recording numerical descriptions of every new flower and analysing the inheritance of dominant, recessive and suppressed characteristics it would not be quicker. Just as many generations would have to be worked through to divide and combine characteristics in desired ways. The important thing however is that the breeder must be obsessed with Hibiscus and prepared to tend them 365 days a year!”

Indeed, Dr. Woods is obsessed, and it all started with that mystery plant he saw in the South of France 27 years ago.

A Trip to Korea: Adventures of a Modern Day Plant Hunter

As we got closer to the Yellow Sea the greater my sense of concern. The rain was pelting against the windshield of the bus so hard the wipers seemed useless. A sick feeling was building in my stomach. What have I done? It was I who convinced Dale Deppe, the owner of Spring Meadow Nursery to go to Korea in search of plants. And now, the two of us were on bus heading to the coast straight into a Typhoon! No wonder we were the only passengers on the bus! At first, the Korean scenery had looked hopeful, even here, we saw plant nurseries and poly greenhouses scattered along the highway, but soon my spirits sank. The rain came down harder and although we still saw the occasional greenhouse, the structures now lay three feet deep in brown muddy water. Washed out roads, rice fields that looked like expansive lakes and a report that eight people had been washed away fueled my worries. This was my introduction to plant hunting in Asia. We had unknowingly came during typhoon season.

I'd heard plant hunters Berry Yinger and Dan Hinkley tell of their travels, filled with high adventure, adversity and the general tribulations of wild collecting in Asia, but my plant collecting practices are quite different. More like business trips than romantic adventures, I search out plant enthusiasts, plant breeders and growers in the hope of finding ornamental plants with commercial promise. My plant hunting philosophy is simple. The odds of finding a commercially interesting plant in Asia are much better in a nursery than out in the woods or on the side of a mountain. Local nurserymen and plant enthusiasts know the local flora better than I could ever dream to know in an 8 day visit. I had come to Korea to find new plants for the American nursery market, but as we traveled into our first typhoon, it was difficult to remember why we came, and if it had been such a good idea after all?

Our journey actually began a year earlier, back in my office in Michigan. I had been reading Dendroflora, a plant journal published by the Royal Boskoop Horticulture Society. I was pouring over the latest issue looking for clues that might lead me to a new plant or plant breeder. Although my Dutch is worse than poor, I was able understand an article on Hibiscus syriacus, more commonly know as Rose of Sharon. It’s a showy flowering shrub that has big colorful blooms in late summer, ant it’s hardy enough to grow out of doors in Northern climates. A small footnote in the article cited a collection Hibiscus syriacus at Mirim Botanical Garden in South Korea that cultivated over 150 different varieties. Unbelievable! Our nursery has perhaps the largest collection of Hibiscus syriacus in North America and we only have thirty six cultivars. This was the lead I had been looking for. A source for something new and exciting for the hungry American plant market. Few plants offer the blast of summer color that Hibiscus syriacus does, and not much has happened in this genus since the National Arboretum released it triploid, Greek Goddess series back in the mid eighties. Although these are beautiful plants, they are weak growing hybrids that lack sufficient hardiness. We were looking for something better.

Although my first love is horticulture, my position as Product Development Manager forces me to act as much like a detective as well as a plantsman. Years back, I read of an American expatriate, Carl Ferris Miller, who had stayed on in South Korea after World War II. He had fallen in love with Korea, given himself a new Korean name and had changed his citizenship, being only one of only two Americans ever to do so. Working as a stock broker in Seoul during the week and as an amateur botanist in the weekends, Miller, almost unknowingly, built a private arboretum about three hours south of Seoul in a small fishing village called Chollipo. Mr. Miller was our door into Korean Horticulture. Certainly he would lead us to meet the right plant people in Korea but I did not know his new name and had no idea how to locate him. My next big break came when I stumbled upon a web page published by an amateur Hibiscus enthusiast (http://members.tripod.cpm/~h_syriacus). I had found the most comprehensive listing of Hibiscus cultivar descriptions ever compiled. What a wonderful invention the internet is, providing the common man or woman the opportunity to freely publish to a worldwide audience on topics as obscure as Hibiscus syriacus! I downloaded addresses and telephone numbers for several Korean contacts, including Mr. Miller's Chollipo address. At last, I had the beginnings of a rough itinerary.

Driving closer to the coast, my doubts and misgivings increased. I had written to all of my intended contacts months before our departure, but only a few had written back. I had come to learn that Koreans don't use traditional street numbers for addresses. Supposedly street numbers are a Japanese invention, and anything Japanese is not to be accepted in Korea. The mail delivery relies primarily upon the quality of the mail carrier. When mail arrives in a village or neighborhood it’s up to the mailman and his memory to do the rest. Fortunately, I had received confirmation from Chollipo. Miller had instructed his staff there to assist us, for he would be in Outer Mongolia when we arrived. The assistance of the Chollipo staff was key if we were to effectively fill our two week itinerary and have any success finding plants. As our express bus stopped in village after village, I wondered if each one was our stop and how we would know with any certainty. Would the typhoon ruin all of our plans? What would become of the other typhoon that was building in the Pacific Ocean. I had been warned that August in Korea would be hot and humid, akin to summer in Houston, but no one had warned me about the typhoons. August is not the time to vacation in Korean between the typhoons, the heat and humidity, but we did not come to vacation. My contacts had specified that peak Hibiscus bloom would be the second week in August, so here we were, driving into a typhoon.

When we reached the end of the line, the bus driver signaled toward the exit and smiled. Pleased with his driving skills and recognizing the tension of the long drive he offered us cigarettes as we departed the Hyundai bus into the storm. I took the cigarette out of politeness, but it was soon too wet to light. The torrential rains had soaked it and us as we ran the six long feet to a small roadside tent that served as a bus depot. We had arrived in Mollipo, South Korea a summer tourist town without any tourists, only two wet Americans and a roadside tent / bus depot / convenience store. My instructions were to call the arboretum once we arrived, but the tent had no telephone. The shopkeeper pointed across the road to a phone booth, after I mimed a telephone call holding my empty hand up to my face.

Few people hunt plants in Korea. China and Japan are much more exotic, romantic and productive. Hunting in Europe has the distinct advantage in that we share a common alphabet, which greatly enhances travel, overall communication and your sense of security. We chose Korea for those same reasons most people don’t. Few others have been to Korea to look for plants so we faced less competition. Another unique feature favoring Korea is that Hibiscus syriacus is their national flower. Even though it’s native to Syria, the Koreans have adopted the flower as their own. In some manner, it has the symbolic significance of a unified Korea, North and South. We saw the significance of Hibiscus syriacus on several occasions during our trip. At a government research station we saw a field planted with of hundreds of Hibiscus laid out in the shape the Korean peninsula, with each state having a different flower color. We were guests at the “National Hibiscus Festival” in Children’s Park in Seoul where politicians and dignitaries lined up at the podium to give speeches. To a couple of western nurserymen this all looked very important as we sweated under the intense Korean sun with our silk Hibiscus flowers pinned to our lapels.

Within seconds of dashing from the bus depot / tent to the phone booth across the street, my umbrella was contorted and useless. It didn’t take to long to

 realize that using a pay phone was futile. Back in the tent, armed only with my drenched puppy dog look and more telephone-like gestures I had convinced a local man to make our call on his cell phone. He motioned for us to get in out of the rain and into his car. But instead of a phone call, the man, much to our surprise, revved up his car and zipped up a narrow washed out dirt road. Helpless and wet best describes our condition. Our continued attempts to have him use his Sansung cell phone were as futile our pay phone attempt. Trusting in the goodness of people was our only option at this point so we sat back and enjoyed the bumpy ride to who knows where.
Plant hunting trips are a crap shoot. You never know what you will find. You are certain to find something new or rare but to find a really good ornamental shrub is another story. Many of our customers’ clients are at war the big mass merchandisers. When fighting Goliath, you’re not going to win fighting it out on price, because you just don’t have the purchasing power of a big chain. Independent garden centers have successfully resorted to offering better service and better products. New and improved plant varieties are an essential weapon in their battle. That’s one of the reasons we look for new plants. But a plant has to be more than just new. People want color and easy care, and to get them to buy a plant, it needs lots of appeal. We’re not just hunting for plants, we’re hunting for commercially viable plants and that’s a lot more challenging. Often we come home with nothing, but that’s not to say the trip was a waste. It’s a slow process that takes commitment and patience. If we meet the right people and establish the right kind of relationship, they’ll remember us when or if they ever develop or discover a new plant.

Our immediate goal was the Chollipo Arboretum, so when our unnamed driver pulled into an apartment complex we felt somewhat confused. With the typhoon raging on and a storm of conversation between our driver and some of the apartment dwellers, we were taken aback when one of the tenants, speaking in perfect English greeted us and welcomed us to Chollipo Arboretum. No, we did not discover any new and exciting plants at Chollipo, but all was not lost. The typhoon soon headed north, the sun came out and we had two great days in the arboretum. We made good friends, ate freshly caught, barbequed eels and washed them down with xozu (a strong potato wine). The eel wasn’t too bad and the Korean people were great. That night the storm knocked out the electricity, and we had a candlelight dinner of fish stew in a nearby fishing village. When the lights came back on we played ping pong with some of the Arboretum’s college interns. Although they spoke no English, and I spoke even less Korean, the oohs and aahs uttered after a vigorous volley or a surprisingly good shot by the American said it well enough. The Chollipo staff helped us set promising appointments, told us which buses and trains take, and called our appointments in advance. The sun was shining again.

Eight days in Korea can be a long time when you’re away from home, your wife, kids and a western style bed. It seems even longer when you’re not used to the 98 degree temperatures and 99 percent humidity. When traveling the country side, we had a chance to experience the real Korea. Sure, one of our hotels had ocean water in the tap, but what difference does this make when there’s no shower or bath anyway. The beds were no more than a quilt and a linoleum floor, but in some ways it was as enjoyable as Seoul Hilton where we stayed during the later days of our trip. While most westerners will never experience the sights and smells of a Korean fishing village, I feel fortunate to have seen this part of Korea.

After the South Korean Secretary of Agriculture finished his “Hibiscus Festival” speech, Dr. Shim, a local horticulture professor who studied at the University of Illinois, quickly pulled me aside and told me that a television crew was going to ask me some questions. He dragged us over to a series of scientific display posters and motioned for us to stay put. I like to think of Dr. Shim as the Mike Dirr of Korea. Both of them love plants and both share their knowledge enthusiastically. Dr. Shim was basking in the media, telling his fellow citizens how he had hybridized a series of new Hibiscus. This was the one day of the year, he later told us, that the media was interested in Hibiscus. He was not wasting his opportunity. Suddenly, all the cameras were pointed at me! Dr. Shim whispered into my ear, “Tell the Korean people how much you love the new Hibiscus. Tell them your plans to introduce them in America.”
“Dr. Shim has created the most beautiful new Hibiscus,” I said proudly basking in my fifteen seconds of fame. “The American people will love them,” I proclaimed as the sweat rolled down by brow. Before the day was done, we were interviewed by yet another Korean TV station, but this time back at Dr. Shim’s research plots. “We love Dr. Shim’s new Hibiscus,” I shouted over the roar of F16 fighter jets playing war games overhead, “ … and the American people will too!”



We’re excited about these plants and believe they made the whole trip a great success, but only time will tell if the American people will love Dr. Shim’s new Hibiscus too. Plant hunting is like a crap shoot. Not all the plants you find will be winners. Our plants are locked in quarantine for two years. We’ll have to see how they perform and see if they have what it takes to be popular with the public. We also brought back other plants that have commercial promise, but these too will have to be tested and evaluated in our climate. Regardless, whether a single plant ever makes the grade and gets into a garden center, our trip to Korean was a success. We formed some great new friendships in Korea and these friendships hold a wealth of promise. We had met with a university professor who studied at the University of Illinois, an Arboretum director with a PhD from Michigan State, a government researcher who attended NC state and a friend at the Chollipo Arboretum with whom I had studied with at Longwood Gardens some 20 years ago.

Dr. Kyung-Ku Shim and myself 

I recently saw the evening news where they showed leaders of North and South Korea hugging in public. This event was even more surprising than finding myself on Korean TV. A new breed of Rose of Sharon, the symbol of one Korea, appears to have taken root. But as it is with new plants, its hard to tell this too successful in the long run. Dr. Shim is hopeful. He and others are breeding hardier strains of this beautiful plant. New plants that can endure the frigid winters of the North when it is reunited with the South. We too are hopeful for Hibiscus. It’s a beautiful plant that shines in the heat of the summer. Few plants deliver such color and have impulse appeal. Who can resist the beauty of this plant in full bloom? Sure, some plant snobs will turn up their nose at Rose of Sharon as too common, but fortunately most Americans aren’t plant snobs. So I’ll say it again, “…We love your Hibiscus Dr. Shim … the American people will too!”

Copyrights reserved 2000 Tim Wood