Showing posts with label Syringa. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Syringa. Show all posts

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




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!

Bloomerang Lilac Starts a Controversy

Who would have thought that Bloomerang® Purple Lilac (Syringa ‘Penda’ ppaf) would create such a controversy? First Slate magazine comes out with an article entitled “Gilding the Lilac: A new hybrid could kill the nostalgia...” and then MaCleans Magazine follows up with an Internet article titled the “Ever-blooming Lilac Wars.” It seems that some people feel a lilac should bloom only once and only in the spring. I disagree and so do the thousands of people that rushed to buy Bloomerang when Better Homes and Gardens magazine did a limited release in March of 2009. Expecting to sell just a thousand plants, BH&G sold over 11,000 plants and turned away a throng of disappointed, potential buyers.



Bloomerang Lilac is not the first reblooming lilac. In 1917 Charles Sargent of the Arnold Arboretum noted that Syringa microphylla (S. pubescens subsp. microphylla var. microphylla) “… if it keeps up its habit of flowering a second time in autumn it will be at least interesting even if other lilacs are more beautiful. In her 1928 book “Lilacs” Susan McKelvey noted that S. microphylla has “… the curious habit of blooming twice in one season.” Syringa ‘Josee’ (syn. MORjos 06F) a small leafed, pale pink flowered cultivar introduced in 1974 by Minier Nursery of France is another noted remontant lilac. ‘Josee’ is a complex cross (Syringa pubescens subsp. microphylla x Syringa pubescens subsp. patula (syn S. velutina) x Syringa meyeri subsp. meyeri) developed by Georges Morel. More recently, Frank and Sara Moro of Select Plus International Nurseries of Quebec, Canada introduced several reblooming cultivars. So why all the fuss about Bloomerang lilac?


There are a number of things that have put Bloomerang in the spotlight. From my observations, (and a good many of the 400 garden writers that trialed the plant) it is the most consistent and prolific remontant lilac to date. The initial bloom is heavy and appears in mid-May. It goes through a rest in June and then begins to rebloom in July and continues on until frost. While the summer and fall panicles are not as large as those in the spring, it puts on a very good show. Every single branch bears flowers (not just an occasional flower). One of the reasons for its propensity to flower is its strong growth. As long as it continues to grow it continues to produce new flowers. You don’t have to prune it get it to rebloom, however, a light shearing after the initial bloom results in a fuller plant with more branches and thus more blooms.


As far as its ability to bloom and rebloom I have no doubt. In the selection process, I tagged only the seedlings with the most prolific summer bloom. Each year I repeated the process and in the end I chose the three plants with the most tags. These three, strongly remontant selections, were then propagated and evaluated further in production and in the garden. Eventually we selected one plant and introduced it as Bloomerang Purple. Of the remaining two plants, one appeared special enough to introduce and should be out in a few years. 



Our Lilac breeding program continues on. I have sowed out F2 crosses and have selected five more remontant plants of various shapes and colors. I have also made crosses that draw in new genetics to obtain plants with dwarf habits, glossier foliage, better fall color and larger flowers. Many of these plants look promising but only prolonged testing and evaluation will determine which, if any, are worthy of introduction. But the plan is to offer a range plants under the Bloomerang series.


As the Product Development Manager at Spring Meadow Nursery, one of my main functions is to find new and superior plants for the Proven Winners flowering shrub line. The shrubs in this line are selected based on a specific criterion that in its most general terms focuses superior performance, improved disease resistance, ease of production and culture, compact and dwarf habits, attractive foliage, and extended or multiple seasons on interest. Adding lilacs to the line was a goal of mine because they offer many fine attributes that make them popular. Most notably lilacs bloom in the spring when people are in the garden center, they offer excellent hardiness, they’re well recognized by consumers, they’re very colorful in bloom and they offer fragrance. On the other hand lilacs typically offer only one season of interest and are susceptible to Powdery Mildew and Pseudomonas. Bloomerang addresses all of these issues and as a result is off to a very good start.


Still, I’m not sure why Bloomerang or any other reblooming lilac is so controversial. It seems to me that some people like to complain and to create controversy even where is there is none. I guess it helps them sell magazines and attract blog subscribers. Regardless, it’s strange to read comments like “ Of all the things that plant hybridizers could be focusing on, this type of indulgence is a waste of creativity… (GardenRant.com, August 9, 2009 “How much plant improvement can we stand?”). How can I respond except to say go ahead and call me indulgent and blame me for ruining the joy of lilacs. It will only sell more plants and beautify more yards.

Reblooming Flowering Shrubs: Part I

With the advent of Endless Summer Hydrangea there has been a lot of interest in reblooming shrubs. And why not? Garden space is valuable and you should get the most out of your shrubs. Here are few of my favorite rebloomers.
Indigofera pseudotinctoria 'Rose Carpet'



I don't want to overload you with too many images so I will show you some more rebloomers in my next post. You can learn more about each plant by clicking on the plant name. What have I missed? What are good rebloomers for you?