Gardens by Kelly Productions

From time to time, the biodiversity of the world imparts pearls of planty wisdom.  Gardening is a lifelong learning experience, one that never ceases to amaze me.  Though I’ve gardening for around 19 years of my life–at one time on a scale of marigolds and pumpkins, and at present on a scale of acres–I’m still just a learner.  The beauty of this buzzing 21st century life is that we grow together as a community of learners in a more connected way than we ever have before.

A few that have come to mind again lately, particularly during recent browsing on Annie’s Annuals website (a truly great source of plants)…

1) If it’s a kickass Salvia that I like, it’s naturally, not hardy. See here. I’m afraid this applies to more than Salvia.

2) It wouldn’t take much (only a truly suitable climate) to be completely beguiled by “hardy” Impatiens.  See here.

3) Certain specific epithets make you go “woah, that’s gotta be cool”.  Three I’ve encountered lately:  kilimanjari (from Mt. Kilimanjaro), namchabarwensis (from Namcha Barwa Canyon), michauxii (named for French botanist Andreas Michaux).

4) True plant nerds scour every public landscape for sports and mutants–constantly. (reminded after a student today goes ‘what are you doing?’ as I casually gawked my head at every overgrown viburnum, dogwood, lilac, etc. we walked past on campus)

5) We need to grow more bush clovers (Lespedeza spp.).  At first guess, I’d say they get a bad wrap because a few are weedy and invasive, but I’m not sure that many know even those.  The slender bush clover (Lespedeza capitata) blooms in July and has glistening foliage, a native of the Midwest.  I have found forms with superior, silver coloring than wild-type specimens that virtually shine.  Any mention of bush clovers must include ‘Samindare’, a cultivar of L. thunbergii.  I’ll take a photo of me doing a mosh pit in this thing in a few weeks.  It’s too damn terrific for words.  For now, a photo of flowers from last year.  Cultivation note–cut back to a foot high in spring (it’s a pseudo-woody kinda plant).

If you need someone to blame for yet another diatribe on Gen Y gardening, direct your browser to my friend Doug Green.  Feel free to give him credit too if you find this post praiseworthy.

I guess I feel like a broken record sometimes, preaching the good word about why Gen Y is the next best thing for horticulture (heck any new generation of consumers is, right?)  But I also realize that it can take the human mind 15-20 instances of repetition before committing a fact or impression to long-term memory.  I’m honestly not being facetious here, I just realize that it takes adamancy and tenacious repetition to effectively communicate worthy ideas.  Without getting too long-winded on a subject that’s dear and close, here I go again.

Here’s the best way I can state the problem:

Retailers and trade professionals are concerned that Gen Ys (and even Gen Xs to some degree) aren’t consuming horticultural products like generations before them.  They feel like the industry isn’t connected or geared to understand this generation and generally vex over change.

Fair enough?

Here’s the best way I can frame the solutions (for there are many):

Trade professionals need to fess up to one unyielding fact–the way we do business must change.  A classic example of what happens when you don’t change can be found in the headlines earlier this week: Park Seed Sold for $13 million.  When you fail to change your business model to meet the needs of a new audience, you’re doomed to failure.  This is likely the beginning of more sad news for Park Seeds, a could-have-been success story.  A company with tremendous history and a rich legacy buckled under poor management and waffled in world of stifled credit because it lacked (and no doubt will continue to lack) a cogent philosophy about how to sell gardening in the 21st century.  I could list more examples, but I digress.

I don’t know how plainly to make this case.  Gardening is a three-p concept:  people, plants, and passion. Watch this Youtube clip of yours truly if you need a visual.  Our business is about connecting the dots between those three or finding the point at which those intersect.  Let me break it down p by p…

People–In the last few years, we’ve learned something huge about gardening that may have been lost on us before.  Gardening can be a highly social activity while also being a very personal expression of self.  Gardeners of all ages photograph their favorite plants, post them to Twitter, Facebook their questions to their gardening friends, and blog about their experiences.  Great!

Now after stating the obvious, what does that imply for those of us in the trade?  We have to become vital parts of those networks.  Why?  Because we’re the leaders, the experts, the sources of information that people need for basic support and look towards for inspiration.  A lot of businesses and professionals get the first part.  They’ve got high-tech websites, their doing social networking, etc.  Again, great.  But it’s the last part that I find lost to blank stares.  In this age of high social connectivity, the last thing we should do is surrender our talents, creativity, skills, and knowledge to our audience.  We have a role to play in inspiring gardeners to want what they don’t know they need, to expose them to new, progressive ideas about how to garden sustainably, and new plants.  People are looking to us for information and inspiration, but are instead finding their questions sucked into a vacuum.

Plants–The ABCs of horticulture right here.  I’ve always chuckled at phrases like “plant-driven” design.  How else should garden design, or gardening in general be driven?  Gardens aren’t built of patio pavers, hardwood mulch, and high-priced ceramics.  They’re built from the ground-up with plants.  Recent estimates by academics show that of the over 250,000 flowering plants on this planet, we use just 5-6% horticulturally (~15,000 species).  The frontiers for exploration are vast!  Cool plants abound!  I firmly believe, regardless of demographics or generation, that people want to populate their spaces with cool plants.  They may not always appreciate every botanical or horticultural nuance, but they want a distinctive, dynamic space that spells them across their landscape, indoors or outdoors.  For anyone following the Gen Y beat, look to promote more native plants, tropicals, succulents, and outrageously colorful, versatile plants (hmm, edible landscaping?) in an effort to pique the taste and curiosity of people my age.  I’ll talk more about this in the weeks and months ahead, rest assured.

Passion–Here’s the big one.  We presently have no clue as an industry as to why people garden.  Little to none!  We’re scared to ask most times.  I find most garden centers much more concerned about things like “buying habits” and “display design.”  Think a little more macro for a minute.  Why do you garden?  Why do your clients garden?  When we can find some authentic answer to that question, we’re going to see gardens on every corner, more municipalities investing in high-quality public landscaping, and green everywhere.  Look at older cultures like that of the United Kingdom.  Gardening there is a fiber of society, a good and right thing to do “just because.”  In fact, I’d go so far to say that have one of the hippest gardening cultures on the planet.  Pick up an issue of Gardens Illustrated or The Garden, and you’ll see what I mean.  There gardening is an identity (read: I am a gardener), something I do believe we’re close to developing in this country given the resurgence of interest in growing food in the last few years.  I mean if foodies can translate passion through culinary arts, why can’t hortiholics translate passion through gardening?  We can, sure.  But we need to do it more.

In analogy form, we’re selling car parts, without telling our customers the difference between a Toyota and a Corvette. Or we’re selling the ingredients to the best chocolate cake without teaching them how to cook (we’re really good at recipes, but we all know how fatal just “following a recipe” can be).  We’ve got to own this challenge, not waffle in its wake.

Strategies:

1.  Let’s quit moping already.  I’m so sick of hearing frustrations vented about “lack of interest by Gen Ys in gardening” that I could scream.  Invest that worry time in a solution.  If someone prominent professed a lack of hope in my generation, quit listening.  They don’t get it.  Do you really think something as magnanimous and time-honored as gardening will disappear with one generation of American consumers?

2.  Let’s start talking about plants like they’re plants instead of furniture.  Sure it’s a worthwhile strategy to find the interface between home and garden and what plants mean to people.  I’m not knocking that.  But let’s do things like Pistil’s Nursery is doing in Portland, Oregon–creating a lifestyle around sustainability, cool plants, and the passion for growing plants.  This little destination garden center in an old neighborhood of North Portland sells everything from tomatoes to Allium sikkimense and Indigofera heterantha.  Crazy cool and it works!

3. Let’s craft a national narrative about gardening.  Our trade organizations could pool resources and have tremendous impact here (the florist organizations did this a few years ago).  The media and marketing environment is prime for this.  Let’s find gardening “celebrities” less interested in merchandise packages on TV-shopping channels and product tie-ins and more interested in why people garden, what plants they want to garden with, and inspiring people to garden and make art (see Growing a Greener World on PBS for an example).

I could go on.  Doug Green wants more gardening in gadgetry.  I can get behind that too.  What are your thoughts and ideas for making gardening more hip, fresh, and sustainably good-looking as a lifestyle choice?

Iowa weather is admittedly strange.  We whine about the cold in the barest months like January and February, while often sporting a few degrees more than places farther north.  We whine about the sweltering heat in stifling months like July and August, while still registering cool temperatures and less humidity than climes farther south.  But what we really can complain about, on nights when we’ve got nothing better to write about, is the change–constant change.

Just a week ago, I left the house for an hour or less a day, driven to hibernate in the wake of a warm, humid streak that made for highs in the upper 90s and dewpoints that hovered around 80.  This morning I woke to find a cool, September-esque breezing floating through the house and never saw the thermometer rise about 69 all day.  How Seattle…

I smiled as I walked around the garden tonight.  The lawn has all but disappeared in some places, retreating to dormancy and leaving behind dying algae and moss–stark irony indeed!  Some newly planted acquisitions, like two hardy sweet peas (Lathyrus vernus ‘Flaccidus Roseus’ and Lathyrus aureus) aren’t sure what to do.  After spending most of the spring and early summer in rich, humusy potting soil, I imagine my now, hard excuse for topsoil seems like a sick joke.  August stalwarts like rosinweeds (Silphium spp.) and tube clematis (Clematis heracleifolia) rage on against the dying of good growing conditions, delighting me almost daily with their perseverance.

My trip round the garden tonight after the rain reminded me of an ever-present list of chores.  I have three Ozark bluestars (Amsonia illustris) that need moved, badly, but I’ve been putting it off so as not to sacrifice their lovely fall color display.  I may bite the bullet and relocate them to the corner of the house I’m revamping soon, possibly tomorrow if all works right.  They’ll join a host of ornamental grasses, false indigos (Baptisia), ironweeds (Vernonia), and new bearded irises (no surprise).

And after donning a jacket for this thoughtful poke-around, I’ve decided I can “feel” fall.  What garden chores top your list as fall inevitably nears?

Though you may be familiar with the story of Sisyphus from Greek mythology involving a boulder, my version involves a 10-gallon nursery container of black bamboo (Phyllostachys nigra).

According to mythical legend, Sisyphus was a Greek king punished in death for his deceitfulness with the endless and unavailing task of pushing a boulder up a hill only to watch it tumble down again as he neared the top–an eternity of frustration.

In some grossly overblown way, I think Sisyphus would feel my pain, hauling buckets of water to an ever-thirsty bamboo as I do on a near nightly basis.  If I sunk it into a swimming pool, I’m positive it would wilt by evening.

Of course the easiest way to end my condemnation to hydrological eternity would be to just plant the damn thing.  But my plans for a bog, sterling and firm last fall when I inherited this bamboo from my gardening friend Rosemary, seem to have fallen through.  So without any immediate home, I’m sure I’ll continue to prolong its plastically confined existence one 5-gallon dousing at a time.

I’m beginning to think a boulder wouldn’t be that bad.

, at least in places with real summers, requires a tenacious constitution and a steady supply of hard liquor (for us drinking sorts).  As for a tenacious constitution, I indulge in aimless teeth-gritting, occasional swearing, and fitful stamping as rivulets of sweat run down my nose.  But I grow on in spite of whatever weather throws my way.  I may rip out some corner of the garden this weekend, saving it from further melting.  But then again I may just retire at day’s end from my nursery work.  That’s what the hard liquor is for.

Pardon this rant on the business of new plant development.  A recent conversation on Facebook about the performance of a new, yellow shasta daisy called ‘Banana Cream’ led my wanderlust-prone mind to think about the how our green industry develops, promotes, and sells new products.  This whole post really has nothing to do specifically with that aforementioned daisy, which although I’m not giddy about, shows some promise in a market brimming in just the last year with several new cultivars of Shasta daisy.

One commenter retorted in response to my comment about “not getting Shasta daisies” (I don’t see what all the fuss is about frankly) that if I worked in a garden center, I’d understand why breeders (and apparently customers) are giddy about Shasta daisies.  A slew of other comments followed in reference to said variety–some glowing, some mixed.  But another commenter was careful to point out that as a landscaper, he didn’t really care what something looked like in a pot on a bench somewhere.  If it failed to perform in the garden and live up to the hype, why bother with it at all?

And that’s what got me thinking.  The analogy posed by the first commenter evinces a bothersome perception within our industry about the development of plants.  Basically, if it looks good at the point of sale, we’ve done our job simply because we’re satisfying a need, urge, or desire of our target public.  Sound fishy?  It should.  That’s like saying that as car buyers, we only expect our automobiles to look good on the showroom floor.  Wrong.  So why the double standard for our plants?  Who wants a landscape of sorry looking, poorly performing, and underachieving plants?

As a plant breeder, I demand ambition of my progenies.  I want “wow” plants (read: compelling)–specimens that make you stop and look, grab your attention and hold it.  People buy plants for any number of different rational and subjective reasons, and it would be false and incomplete of me to attempt to list those here.  But I do believe our vast, diverse buying public shares a common interest in the value of the product in their shopping cart (isn’t that a basic tenet of retail science?)  If we don’t value our own products by demanding and expecting the best from our work, why should our clients?  The most magical moment for me as a nursery owner is not when I can simply answer and fulfill a client’s questions and immediate needs, but rather when I can inspire them to want something they had no idea they really needed.  Call it savvy salesmanship if you like.  But I think it’s just the way we’ve got to do business.  I want to inspire people to grow more, better plants.

For purposes of full disclosure: This post isn’t a subliminal message aimed at ‘Banana Cream’ Shasta daisy.  There’s any number of reason why my few plants in one spot in my display garden don’t look good.  When asked to opine, I simply suggested that I wasn’t flattered with them this year.  Next year could be different.  Maybe the spot isn’t just to its liking (I know I’ve not always thrived if my “spot” wasn’t just so).  We shouldn’t immediately jump to conclusions about why plants do or do not perform without a little evidence, some smart intuition, and half a clue about the plant(s) in question.  The biology of a living thing isn’t so straightforward.  Who knows, I might even end up liking this thing someday…when I get around to “getting” Shasta daisies.

To date, I think I’ve spent one, all-out serious day in the garden.  Yesterday.  Sure, I was home for short weekends back in April, gardening for hours on end.  I was here most of May during iris bloom season, and lived outside for most of that month too.  But as far as days go where nothing crosses my mind but the blunders of my trowel, I count a lonely one.

And likely as a carryover from yesterday, I sat at my desk today, peering through a window pelted by rain, and found myself in a gardening state of mind.  I like to think I always am, but usually it’s only most of the time.  There are days where paperwork and email and voicemail clutters my head, instead of the sights and smells of the garden.  But in a gardening state of mind, all that disappears.  My mind at that point refuses to leave alone the mental list of garden chores to do, or the tempting idea to wander and stroll without any purpose at all.  It’s those moments, those humble blinks of unshaming ecstasy that I wish I could share with non-gardeners in my effort to create a more beautiful world.  When we can finally give up the din of life’s motor for something more human and less mechanistic, we’ll come to a much greater understanding about the peace and beauty of the natural world around us.

Poet Wendell Berry explored such peace and beauty in his poem The Peace of Wild Things.  The ultimate sentence  summarizes my gardening state of mind: “For a time/ I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.”

Spring across much of the country is off to an exponential start.  The floral race began here just a few weeks ago with the Scilla and Hamamelis. Along with the rush of green things comes that seasonal rush that every nurseryman feels to his/her very core!  I’ll keep this short but wanted to sound off on a couple of upcoming calendar items that I think you should know about.

This coming weekend I’m trekking to Kansas City for two lectures to the Garden Center Association of Greater Kansas City at the Anita B. Gorman Discovery Center.  My first lecture, Gardening Regionally in the Four-Season Garden begins at 10 AM and is free to the public.  My second lecture, Zoneworthy will be held immediately after.  There is a cost to attend the second lecture (lunch served).  Visit the GCA’s website for more details if you’d like to attend!

I’m thrilled to be headed back to Mansfield, MO and Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds for their Spring Planting Festival on May 2 and 3.  Thousands of gardeners annually pay homage to this festival celebrating heirloom seeds, sustainable living, and a simpler way of life.  I’ll be giving a lecture each day.  If you don’t know about Jere and Emilee Gettle’s legacy of passionate work preserving heirloom plants, read more on their website www.rareseeds.com.

And just as soon as I get back to Ames from the Spring Planting Festival, I turn right around and catch a plane to stellar Las Vegas for the National Hardware Show.  My lovely hosts are the editorial team of Lawn and Garden Retailer magazine, the source of all the news for garden centers across the country.  I’m charged with firing up an audience full of retailers about the prospects of Generation Y and gardening.  I can’t wait!  We’ve got a huge number of passionate gardeners under 30 who just need to be coaxed into our otherwise dirty company.

Then….iris season!  Rainbow Iris Farm opens for the bloom season on May 8.  We’re open daily through June 4.  If your garden club or civic group would like to have a guided tour, give our offices a call or send us an email.  See our website for more details.

One last note of shameless self-promotion before I go for a glass of juice.  If you’d be so kind, I would certainly appreciate your nomination for a Mouse and Trowel Award.  These are top honors for garden bloggers, and its only after a little encouragement from fellow bloggers that I’m even passing this along to you.  At the very least, support other great blogs (and favorites of mine) including Fern Richardson’s Life on the Balcony,  Tom Fischer’s Overplanted, Away to Garden by Margaret Roach, or Real Dirt Radio by Ken Druse.  I’ve ranted about it before…too many gardening blogs, too few good garden writers.  Share the love, folks.

And with that, I’m off.  Be well dirt diggers until I write again, likely from the road!

READ BEFORE READING:

{My recent interview with Ken Druse jostled my thoughts again relative to the topic of “the future” as it relates to communication and this passion of ours called gardening.  I don’t pretend for a minute to have all or any of the answers, and you know what they say about free “advice”.  I promise the next post will be something plant-related.  We need some relief from the doldrums, right?}

I just heard Craig Ferguson on his CBS late night TV show say this in reference to newspapers.  He’s implying of course that blogs basically substitute for newspapers.  But do they?  Now I’m not a likely defender of a business as lamely stifling as newspapers, but Craig’s caper of sorts deserves exploration.

As bloggers, we must really have the world duped.  Do blogs really suffice for the kind of journalism relied on and expected for generations in a format like newspapers?  Not hardly.  But is the point of a blog to really transmit news?  Some blogs do of course, particularly those kept by prominent columnists or newspaper writers.  They become subsidiaries of the larger publishing machine, transmitting early leads or insights that later formulate into full-blown stories.  But most blogs really are idea platforms, and only that, existing as the result of passive, fragmented consumption.  They give some writers 15-minutes of fame, offer popular authors a chance to keep in touch with audience members in a more personal way, and still offer more a chance to push agendas to the masses–even the 10 or so who choose to listen.  And while bloggers enjoy support en masse (that whole community idea), their demise comes from an overcrowded room.  Right now, particularly in the gardening realm, little oxygen remains in that room.  When a form of content delivery continues to fragment the market, it’s time for reconciliation.  A new mall only needs so many shoe stores before someone has to give.

So what next?  How does an oversaturated market correct itself?  In the world of real, tangible products and stuff, things start to disappear.  In the iris world for example, almost 50,000 cultivars have entered the marketplace in the last 100 years.  How many are left in existence?  Probably 10-15% or less.  How many are left and really popular, frequently sold, or grown in more than five gardens?  Probably 3-5%.  So let’s replace irises with gardening blogs in that analogy.  Nobody is mandating that bad, inactive, infrequently updated, or poorly written blogs disappear for the sake of others.  Anyone is entitled to share their opinions.  But who listens?

That’s where this whole mess runs astray.  Who listens and reads?  Who cares?  And more importantly, why do those people listen, read, and care?  Does a blog entertain?  Does it stimulate thought?  Does it deliver content that more than five readers want to read?  While blogs and other online media have unlocked the gates of publishing to all, they’ve also systematically unraveled standards of excellence.  No venture (whether market, business, hobby, etc.) has ever operated successfully in the absence of governing standards of excellence–they’re natural products of human-mediated enterprises that result when poor-quality products are perceived the same way as good-quality products.  My prediction, crystal ball firmly in tow, is that blogs will eventually become major powerhouses of content because the few that will remain post-excellence apocalypse will maintain tribal followings of people who demand and expect content produced and delivered in superior ways.  How do you think newspapers like the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post still exist, even in this turmoil that publishing is in?

So how do those blogs exist pre-excellence apocalypse?  They impose those standards of excellence on themselves, rise above current expectations,  bond with their followers, and teach them to dream.  When people enter the business of teaching people to dream, the market drives itself.  Look at the success of Apple, for example.  One company has effectively inspired its clients (and those that aren’t yet) to dream of the possibilities.  If newspapers, blogs, and books inspired their readers to dream of the possibilities of their product (not just how it’s delivered), we wouldn’t even be having this discussion.

Really, all this is just a mantra for how to do business in this day and age…..any business.

Hey readers!

Here’s a quick plug for one of my favorite gardening podcast/radio shows….ever.  Ken Druse Real Dirt is hosted by THE Ken Druse of authorial and photographic fame.  Ken’s most recent book is the beautifully illustrated Planthropology. He garnered international acclaim with his 1988 book The Natural Garden and many others thereafter.

Ken was gracious enough to invite me on his show this week.  Check out the interview on his website.  We cover a lot of ground including irises, zoneworthy plants, and the future of gardening.  Feel free to comment and post feedback!  I’m planning a follow-up blog on some of the topics we discussed later next week.

Please consider subscribing to Ken’s podcast as well.  With lots of great information and interviews, his podcast has always been one of my favorites (gotta love his radio voice too!)

Best!