Going Rogue, Part I: Mums & Pumpkins
I threw a garden party for my friends and colleagues this past Saturday night (hence the reason this e-letter is a few days late…sorry). I spent all last week sprucing up the garden and trying to get things in the ground that I have been collecting all summer. That’s what I get for throwing a party and inviting fellow plant geeks…too much pressure.
I have two very large containers on my front porch that I change seasonally. They were looking a bit tired, so I decided to plant them with fall plants for the party. Let me go on record right here and now to say, “I despise garden mums!”. I don’t mean to offend lovers of the genus Chrysanthemum, but I really do hate them. Let’s be clear – I only hate the round mounds of brightly hued blooms that appear on every garden center and big box store’s sale racks come late summer.
The genus Chrysanthemum is actually quite lovely and varied. During my stint at the U.S. National Arboretum, we grew some of the most amazing and unusual mums for our fall displays. Other public gardens are also growing and displaying them in their fall displays. There’s only one problem – botanic gardens tease these striking plants to the public, but they can’t buy them anywhere.
They do exist and they are weirdly cool, often alien like. I suppose garden center buyers don’t think people would buy them. I would buy them! I wish growers would figure out how to grow them in a pot and make them marketable to garden centers. And perhaps, dare I say… try marketing something different for fall.
I get so sick of seeing pot mums, perfectly shaped and ready to burst into bloom, along with perfectly round pumpkins and very boring selections of pansies in every store. They even sell fake versions of all of these at Michaels for people who don’t want to have to water them…geesh!
I buy the weirdest, most unusually colored, wickedly shaped pumpkins I can find. They must always have a cool stem though. It’s so much fun. My husband and kids love searching for the weird ones too. Funky gourds and squash are cool too and you can eat them when you’re done.
Another thing I would like to see are old fashioned or improved selections of violas and much more exciting cabbage and kale selections in garden centers. They exist too. Vegetable catalogs sell seed. Redbor kale is so hard to find, yet it is one of the prettiest selections for the garden. You can find it in every Whole Foods produce aisle, but look for it to display in your fall containers and you’ll be lucky to find one rogue plant. Why don’t people grow these? They grow the same four selections, year after year. They’ve become the red and golden delicious apples of the kale and cabbage world.
Where’s the variety?
And then to top things off, I saw this paragraph from an e-letter that came out today:
“Here’s a quick and easy idea that adds value and gives customers an easy purchase. (Garden center’s name hidden here) puts together multiple items for a Fall Decoration Package that sells for $XX.XX. The package includes three (perfectly formed, ‘bout to burst into color and will last about two weeks, if you’re lucky) mums, a medium-sized pumpkin, a cornstalk, a mini-straw bale and a scarecrow pick.”
This was the top “pick of the day” spot in this e-letter that goes out to garden center buyers all over the U.S.
Are you kidding me? Seriously? That’s the best idea they could come up with for Fall? Are they really trying to tout this as an innovative idea?
What I really want to see are different things. I know plants. Plants are my life. If I can’t find something different at my local garden centers when I know what I’m looking for, how are we ever going to educate customers? If we show consumers innovative ways to use plants that are already in the garden centers (you know, the ones that are soon to be on sale if they don’t sell before winter) and buy some really cool fall veggies (Have you ever seen how cool broccoli and cauliflower look in 1 gallon pots, ready to plant?), maybe their palettes would open up and I could drive around suburbia without seeing mum vomit and rotting corn stalks on every front porch?
A girl can dream, can’t she?
To be continued on Friday… this rant is just beginning. See Part II on Innovation Not Dracena Spikes
Happy Weeding,
Angela Treadwell Palmer
President, Plants Nouveau
P.S. – I wish I could tell you our brand new, totally cool Echinacea would bloom in fall, but alas, it’s a coneflower and we all know that’s not naturally possible. That being said, I present you with Echinacea ‘Marmalade’, the newest member of the Cone-fections series from the breeding brilliance of Arie Bloom. Let me know if you’d like samples next spring. We’re starting a list now!