Re: Re: HYB: Research: Building a better

In a message dated 12/7/2006 3:22:08 AM Eastern Standard Time,  
tasquierloic@cs.com writes:

I think  Anner Whitehead is full of illusion about gardeners,when she says :  
(/there is some idea that  the general  public wants
more  more more while doing less less less, and there is,  I  suspect,  some
truth to this,


Well, you are wrong about Anner Whitehead. She has few illusions left  and 
this, I assure you, is not one of them. 
 
Around this part of the world there is a very great deal of advertising  hype 
in recent years about getting an impressive garden with a  little work, 
albeit not cheaply. 
 
There is much talk of "low maintenance," along with "all season beauty"  and, 
for better or worse, one of the things that gets heavily hyped in this  
context is multiple-season, or repeat bloom. This holds for plants of  many genera, 
and it is in this climate that the public will receive talk of  repeat bloom 
in the Iris. 
 
The nursery industry, or some segments of it,  invite the public to  believe 
they can have a garden that is "the envy of the neighborhood" with very  
little effort, and when it all dies one simply replaces it, dropping fully  grown 
plants and shrubs into the ground--notice I did not say soil--in a modern  
equivalent of "bedding out," and when a substantial amount of the stuff dies,  
because it was not in fact, low-maintenance, or because it was not adequately  
hardy, for we are seeing some zone-pushing at the nursery centers, then the  
industry will be delighted to sell the customer another round of shrubs and  
perennials next year. Just plant it and mulch it six inches deep and turn on the  
irrigation system, and invite folks over to see the garden. I worry a lot  
that while encouraging horticultural consumership, this is also  setting some 
folks up for disappointment. 
 
I said, I don't know many experienced gardeners who think this way. Most  
know there is work involved in growing things, and they relish that  work as the 
essence of gardening. As with many things in life you  get out of it more or 
less what you put into it, which does not mean good  results may be invariably 
be had by flinging money at a  situation.
 
But this is just my observation, Loic. I do fully understand that all  around 
my country and our common spinning globe there are many  sorts of gardening 
cultures and orientations, some far more enlightened  than others, just as I 
understand that garden fashions come and go, yes, and  that the rain falls on 
the just and the unjust alike.
 
Anner Whitehead 
Richmond VA USA

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