Re: GWL quotes and rants

**"* C* <d*@chilitech.net>**

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Don Eberly" <doneberly@eberlypr.com>
>
> By the way, my window boxes are currently filled with well-tended and
> floriferous dahlias with tuberous roots from both the US and Central
> America.

I'm sure they are, though they must be rather large window boxes or rather 
small dahlias.

Certainly there are PR people who know their product intimately. I know 
several of them myself, and they know I was not talking about them. Most are 
a fountain of information and happy to share it ... within certain limits, 
of course.  PR firms are an asset to garden writers.

But to echo the sentiments of some others here, I do not write from press 
releases or press kits. I am sure you are a fine person, Don, an asset to 
your community, and your mother loves you, but I just don't trust a press 
release or a magazine article written by someone who is also paid to promote 
a plant, or the tag or signage in a megamart designed to sell product to 
tell me the whole story. A plant growing in my garden will.

Let's take those dahlias in your window box. I'm guessing (could well be 
wrong) that they are something like dahlettas or the Gallery series, 
intended to be sold in bloom and treated as annuals. The Gallery series is 
actually pretty good, but for flower count and long season performance there 
are better, but they probably won't be in bloom in a pot on Memorial Day. 
Even so, I have no problem recommending Gallery to my proto-gardener readers 
(where are the Galleries this year?).

I do have a problem with the labeling on some of the larger dahlias, sold as 
tubers in plastic bags, which seem to have been written by that guy with the 
plastic tulips, who certainly does not work for your fine firm. They all say 
they grow to 48 inches. Someone told him that. He didn't grow them. Because 
many grow to seven feet. And they need staking or caging, which the label 
doesn't mention. I tell my readers that, because I know it from experience.

Or take Volcano phlox. The press release honestly calls it "mildew 
resistant," which it is, but my readers don't really know what that means. I 
grew it, found little mildew, and gladly recommend it to my readers. But I 
also tell them, from my experience, that there may be a little mildew and 
that there will be even less, or none at all, if they thin the stems when 
they come up. The press release didn't talk about that.]

You have a job to do, Don, and I understand and appreciate that. Some of the 
better PR people I have worked with will be candid off the record, though 
certainly not to the extent that it hurts their product. But nothing beats 
growing it in your own garden, observing it from babyhood, finding out the 
weaknesses, if any, and telling the readers how to deal with them. The press 
release commonly gives the impression that you just dig a hole, plunk it in 
the ground, and wait briefly for stunning results. I don't think the nuance 
garden writers add to this formula harms an otherwise good product.

D 

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