{Disarmed} Re: new topic - SI popularity

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   I think you are right that the public needs to see better varieties in order to have a desire to grow more Siberians.  Whether they see them in pots at retailers, in display gardens, or in magazines like Horticulture, doesn't matter. 

On the question of better Sibs, there is the issue of the individual flower now most discussed rather than the perennial plant in it's entirety.  I select and keep in the garden, every time, the variety that performs as a full blotch of color rather than the variety that produces a few stellar blooms.    I also, as mentioned by another, want the best foliage.

 

Quite a few perennial plants have these needs.  Dictamus takes five years to be noticed, paeonia nearly that long if a small plant is started.  Another whole bunch are good for only one, two, or three years before requiring division, renewal or total replacement.  Maybe marketing a plant as it looks sited in the garden is a good idea.  The individual bloom, a catalog thing for years and years, can be very disappointing.  Also previously mentioned is hosta which needs many years to show what it can do.  When you are shown a hosta as one leaf, it is not too interesting.  A whole mature clump is better.  With the hosta, no-one tells you it may take five or more years for mature sized clumps.

 

So marketing must be key. Then there is the competition of the TB which has huge flowers and lots of colors and more catalog space.  The average gardener does not have a lot of knowledge which iris is which.  Where I live, iris borers are rampant.  I do not know anyone growing TB's other than older varieties that do not need treating for borers.  TB foliage is awful.   

 

Some things just remain a secret forever. 

 

Claire Peplowski

z 4 NYS mts.

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