collectors and landscapers
- To: "m*@ucdavis.edu"
- Subject: collectors and landscapers
- From: E* W*
- Date: Tue, 31 Oct 2000 17:49:46 -0800
After having worked in various retail nurseries for over10 years I have
noticed
two basic types of plant shopping. Many customers wander around the
nursery
looking for something to catch their attention and then they ask about
or look
up what the potential plant needs and think about a possible location in
their
gardens. The other group of customers comes into the nursery with a
"problem
spot" or "empty spot" in their garden and look for plants for that
particular
location/niche in their landscape. Perhaps you could call the first
group
collectors and the second group garden landscapers...
Right now I am in the collector mode mostly because I work for a
community
college horticulture department and am always on the outlook for new and
exciting plants to acquire for student study. Next year when we move to
our new
facilities then I will need to be both a collector for the students and
a landscaper for our new
gardens.
In a previous job in Rhode Island I was in charge of a 7 acre public
garden and
was constantly on the outlook for a plant solution to different
locations in
the garden, especially after an ice storm or hurricane, gale force winds
or
heavy, wet snow storms.
If your only into a landscape mode, then perhaps you will create a well
designed but ordinary landscape. And if your only into the collectors
mode,
then perhaps you will have every campanula or geranium or ornamental
grass that
will grow in your climate zone but the garden may look like a bunch of
individual plants just thrown in the garden and not a cohesive, living
landscape. Somewhere in the middle range of these two tendencies there
should
be room for a well landscaped garden with a notable specialized
collection. The
whole question of native or Mediterranean or exotic is a whole other can
of
worms!
I think its easier to talk about individual plants in a email forum such
as
medit-plants than it is to talk about landscaping but there really is
not
substitute for holding, smelling, touching a new plant or walking
through,
experiencing and having a quiet moment in a well designed garden.
Perhaps that
is why I always like to visit nurseries and gardens whenever I travel.
Throw in
a good bookstore, local culinary delights and a walk in the countryside
and I
feel like I have been renewed.
Our first substantial rains of fall have greened the mosses, brought out
the
banana slugs, cleaned off the fall colored yellow leaves of Acer
macrophyllum
and brought clean, fresh smells to our gardens and woods. Over 100
Cabrillo
College salvias are still blooming, our species fuchsias are setting
fruit, the
tomatoes have all been pulled, pumpkins are ripe and waiting for
halloween and
pumpkin pies, weeds are coming up everywhere and our greenhouses are
filling up
with cuttings and seedlings for next years plant sale. After having
lived in
New England for seven years, Fall will always be my favorite time of the
year.
Happy Autumn,
Ernie
Central California Coast
