Siberian test garden(s)
- To: s*@onelist.com
- Subject: [sibrob] Siberian test garden(s)
- From: R* H*
- Date: 11 Sep 99 10:21:13 PDT
From: Robert Hollingworth <Cyberiris@netscape.net>
I guess I have some mixed feelings about setting up Siberian test gardens --
in theory they sound great but test gardens don't always work out well in
practice. They require knowledgable and dedicated people to maintain them. The
dedication often wears off over time and things get ragged. It is important
how the guests are judged -- will one person, inevitably with their own
prejudices, do it? Will a group? Will they all be knowledgable in Siberians?
How will the results be presented? Irises vary in how they grow in different
regions and even in different gardens in the same region (how often do you see
all three of the starts of the same iris sent to a typical AIS convention
growing well -- pretty rare). So, growing less than perfectly in one test
garden doesn't mean the iris is a poor performer. But that inevitably is the
impression given if results from a single test garden are widely publicized
e.g. published in the AIS Bulletin (like the Loomis garden). It's a crap shoot
for the hybridizer. Having several test gardens would help even things out,
but then you can run into another problem -- availability of stock. This year
we sent seedlings to six future meeting sites (international, national and
regional) and had to turn down a couple more for lack of stock. Each group
wanted 3-5 good starts. For new seedlings, that completely depletes the stock
grown up over several years. Adding several test gardens onto the list could
create some difficult decisions as to where priorities lie and who gets the
limited stock. It often takes three or four years after introduction of a new
iris to build up enough stock to be able to distribute it freely -- and of
course the more popular it is, the more difficult stock building becomes. We
have been "back-ordered" on Strawberry Fair ever since its introduction in
1994 until this year. So -- setting up test gardens is worth some
consideration, but there are some problems and unless test gardens are done
well, knowledgably and energetically they become more of a trial for the
growers and hybridizers than for the irises. Seems like I'm getting grouchy as
I get older, but experience roughens up the psyche.
What do other hybridizers think? Bob Hollingworth
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