Re: Today's purchases > Labels
perennials@hort.net
  • Subject: Re: Today's purchases > Labels
  • From: &* P* L* <1*@rewrite.hort.net>
  • Date: Sun, 3 May 2015 13:02:43 -0500 (CDT)
----- Original Message -----
> From: "Kitty Morrissy" <1018@rewrite.hort.net>

> I agree, itâs sad. Another tell-tale as to the direction the
> gardening industry is headed is mulch. Here, all the ads and even
> the bag labels refer simply to the color â who cares whatâs in the
> bag?

Wood pallets and nails dyed blood red so your puncture wounds don't
discolor your mulch.  :)

> The city I live in has a pop of 256,496 (county is 363,014) . Every
> year the newspapers run a âcontestâ in which people vote for their
> favorite restaurant, hardware store, grocery, whatever. A local
> nursery won it for 10 years running but then he went out of
> business. Last year, voted as the best nursery, was Menards. Really?

Gardening seems to be entering a sort of 'Dark Ages' everywhere 
that I look.  I still can't figure out if it's consumer-driven,
industry-driven, or both.  

There are definitely niche markets out there and specialty mailorder
nurseries can fill those needs, but the big box stores just provide the
easy-to-grow common stuff that can be mass-produced.  Every once in
a while they'll have a gem, but the price will be too high to make
it worthwhile.

Most 'gardeners' that I talk to nowadays aren't particularly interested
in plant names either.  They just want something pretty, and if it 
dies they'll just go buy another cheap one.

The biggest problem I see is with mis- or under-informed people in
the industry.  I was at a greenhouse yesterday where the worker
told the customer that kale was a perennial here, so she could just
buy one plant and keep harvesting kale for years to come.  Even 
if the temperatures were warm enough here they'd only be biennial...

The place that had cheap perennials yesterday hadn't hardened them
off outside, either.  They had been in a greenhouse and brought out
immediately; when I asked if I needed to bring them in at night the
worker thought that might be a good idea for the first few days.  
Good thing I asked!!!

I earned my undergraduate degree in Landscape Architecture from the
University of Illinois, and I earned my Master's in Horticulture 
from the same place.  We had to take two semesters of classes on 
woody plants, another semester on perennials, a semester of
nursery production...

Now the classes are being cut back. The University focuses on 
environmental sciences and not on nursery production.  Horticulture
students no longer take the woody plant class, so only the landscape
architecture students are doing it.  Unfortunately, that has been
cut to only one semester, so instead of learning 800 species of 
trees, shrubs, and vines they're learning about 400. 

Even the campus Operations and Maintenance department is failing.  
They handle all of the new plantings on campus, but they've stopped
keeping track of what's planted where.  There are no records 
indicating where a tree came from, what cultivar it is, when it
was planted, or anything.   It's just not deemed to be important
any more.

I'm hoping that gardening can be sexy again (and not in a yesterday
was World Naked Gardening Day way).  Hopefully the economy will 
come back, people will have more time to garden, and more Dan Hinkleys
will give us what we're all craving.  :)

I think I just ranted.  Sorry...

Chris

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