This is a public-interest archive. Personal data is pseudonymized and retained under GDPR Article 89.

Re: ColorChoicePlants

Title: Re: [GWL] ColorChoicePlants
Lon -- ColorChoice Plants is a marketing brand of Spring MEADOW Nursery, not Spring HILL.

Spring Meadow is in Grand Haven, Mich., and Tim Wood have been involved with GWA for a decade or more. He's a past GWA regional director (region III). This is the same company that helped introduce some really terrific plants, including Weigela 'Wine & Roses' and 'Midnight Wine,' the 'Limelight' Hydrangea paniculata and 'Black Beauty' Sambucus, to name a few. Its specialty is ornamental shrubs.

And you raise a good point about invasive plants. As you say, buddleja (probably the Buddleja davidii) is considered an invasive species in Oregon, while here in Indiana, it is not.

I have the 'Blue Muffin' Viburnum dentatum, a cultivar of the native arrowwood viburnum. Here in the Midwest, viburnums are plentiful and I have several in my yard, but only one 'Blue Muffin.' Yet mine flowers and fruits nicely. Arrowwood is a frequently used shrub and not considered weedy here.

ColorChoice has a cooperative marketing venture with Proven Winners, where both names are on the items marketed as ColorChoice Proven Winners.

Hope this helps.

jems





        Have many of you been dealing with ColorChoicePlants?  They made a presentation to a press gathering at the Yard, Garden and Patio show last winter, and I got one of their "Black Lace" elderberries from the "Proven Winners" line.
        Recently, I tried to contact them about some of their plants, using the contact on the website, and the letter bounced.
When I went to the site I started discovering things and putting pieces together and I'm disturbed by what is emerging.
        Start off with no physical address listed anywhere on the website.  I finally found a toll-free number virtually hidden in the site and called it.  The answering machine was for Spring Hill nursery.
        In plants, things like a new extra hardy selection of  Viburnum dilatatum  that they picture with lots of fruit on it.  The snags?  Two separate selections of the species are needed to set fruit, and this one (if they are right) is the only one hardy enough for the area they are recommending it.  Which means if you grow it in those areas, you can't get the highly ornamental fruit.  Which might not be that bad because  V. dlatatum is listed in several places as being a highly invasive weed.
        That problem of invasiveness raises another flag with me because their representatives  at the garden show press meeting  touted several new Buddleia selections and they claimed the plants were non-invasive, but they wouldn't say how, and Buddleia is listed as an invasive weed here in Oregon.  My son, who does wildlife surveys, has seen virtual solid walls of it along the Rogue River.
        Then there is the aforementioned "Black Lace" elderberry.  I don't know that particular species, but I do know that many other elderberries can be terrible pests, being spread by birds like mad.
        I haven't had time to go through everything on the list or in the website, but the plants I've seen, and the way the website is set up, to make it hard to contact anyone in person, is making me suspicious as heck.  It looks like these people are pushing a lot of stuff that is questionable, to say the least.
        All I can say is, if you are doing anything with this company, look into it THOROUGHLY before you start recommending it.  You might be pushing invasive weeds.
-Lon Rombough
Grapes, writing, consulting, my book, The Grape Grower, at http://www.bunchgrapes.com  Winner of the Garden Writers Association "Best Talent in Writing" award for 2003.



--
Jo Ellen Meyers Sharp
Garden writer, speaker, photographer
Director, Region III Garden Writers Association
Phone: 317.251.3261
Fax: 317.251.8545
E-mail: hoosiergardener@earthlink.net
_______________________________________________
gardenwriters mailing list
gardenwriters@lists.ibiblio.org
http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/gardenwriters

GWL has searchable archives at:
http://www.hort.net/lists/gardenwriters

Send photos for GWL to gwlphotos@hort.net to be posted
at: http://www.hort.net/lists/gwlphotos

Post gardening questions/threads to
"Gardenwriters on Gardening" <gwl-g@lists.ibiblio.org>

For GWL website and Wiki, go to
http://www.ibiblio.org/gardenwriters
Other Mailing lists | Author Index | Date Index | Subject Index | Thread Index