Ups, Downs & Foamflowers Follies

This was a week full of ups and downs.

Up…

Monday was up because I got to spend the day tooling around the trial gardens and greenhouses with Sinclair Adam, the breeder of our River and Divarella series of foamflowers.

I was able to shoot a new breeder profile video of Sinclair. I want to do this for all of the breeders I work with so you can get to know why they do what they do. It’s also fun to get to know them a bit. They all have such diverse and interesting personalities.

So, I headed out in the mini and we drove the back roads of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania up to Coatesville, the land of foamflowers, and much to my surprise, lovely patches of skunk cabbage. I’m sure the residents of the country road along the way considered me certifiably crazy for stopping the car to traipse through the lowlands to get to the immense population of skunk cabbage along the local creek.

But the photographs I got were to die for. Here’s a close-up in case you’ve never actually been one with this architectural beauty.

Skunk cabbage aside, it was a great trip and a lovely day to be outside. In the video, you’ll find out why Sinclair is so passionate about foamflowers and you’ll see why he was named the Pharaoh of foamflowers by his peers. During my visit I took a tour of the greenhouses to get a glimpse into why he chose the yet to be released selections that make up the Divarella series. We also scoured the new seedlings and chose a few for the future.

Sinclair will show you some of the foliage forms he is searching for and explain why the ground covering selections are the prefect replacement for the ever-invasive English ivy (Hedera helix) and periwinkle (Vinca minor).

I love spending time with Sinclair and his wife Kirsten. They are lovely folks. Please enjoy the Foamflower Follies Video.

Down…

Thursday was down because we had to replant all of the lettuce and other assorted veggies in the 1200 square foot Baltimore City Hall vegetable garden because they completely fried in the heat we had last week.

I got help from 4 master gardeners and a crew from Recreation and Parks in the City, so we planted about 600 veggies in no time. I thought I would have to do most of it myself, so there was an upside. I also never imagined we would have enough plants to replant, so that was a great surprise.

Many thanks to the staff of the greenhouse at the Cylburn Arboretum, who grew the veggies. If you don’t know about the garden, here’s an article from Susan Reimer on the orginal City Hall Vegetable garden. I design the garden for the City …in my spare time. Ha…I said, “Spare time!”

**Sidenote…Baltimore City plans to cut the funding for the Maryland Cooperative Extension service in Baltimore City. If the City cuts the funding, there will be no matching funds from the University. This means, no extension service, no 4H, and worst of all, no master gardener program in the city of Baltimore. This is a huge loss for the City residents and the Department of Recreation and Parks, who depend on volunteer hours form the Master Gardener recruits each year to maintain acres of plantings.

If you live in the state of Maryland, please go to this page about the Baltimore City budget cutting the master gardeners program, copy the letter written by the past President of the Baltimore city master gardeners and send it to anyone you can think of – especially anyone you might know in the City government. Please let them know how important both the Extension Service AND the Recreation and Parks Department are to the life and residents of our city.

Down…

Another down is Scully-girl, our 12 year old German shepherd isn’t doing so well this week. The end is near and it’s been a hard week for my husband because she’s his dog. He had her before met me, so you can understand.

Her spirits are great and she seems happy, but we think the tumor has grown so much that it is pushing on the nerves in her hind legs, causing her great weakness to the point where she can’t walk so well or stand very long. We’re afraid she’s going to hurt herself. So, this will probably be Scully’s last weekend. We’re going to make the best of it with lots of special treats and loads of extra love. Heck, she can even have some chocolate if she wants. She deserves it!

Her favorite foods are milk chocolate, which is known to be poisonous to dogs, and spaghetti sauce. What a ghastly combination, eh?

You see Scully has gotten into chocolate without our permission many times. She adores it. Luckily she’s never gotten sick.

So Scully girl can have some chocolate and some spaghetti sauce and anything else she wants this weekend.

Up…

One of this week’s ups is the announcement that the Garden Idol videos from the possibly embarrassing performance I gave during the ANLA (American Nursery and Landscape Association) Management Clinic back in February will go live on Monday, April 19th. There’s a sneak preview available now featuring the host, Chris “Secrest” Beytes, Editor of Grower Talks Magazine. I wrote about the performance in a previous edition of The Weeding Gnome entitled, Who is going to be the Next Garden Idol?

According to ANLA, “Angela Treadwell-Palmer serves up more variety, more costume changes and more entertainment than you ever thought a new-plant presentation could deliver! If Lobelia ‘Fried Green Tomatoes’ doesn’t have you shouting “Towanda!” then Echinacea ‘Milkshake’ will convince you that Angela’s ‘Milkshake’ is better than yours!”

The video featuring new introductions from Plants Nouveau is called Episode 2 and it will be live on Monday, April 19!

I’m afraid. So very afraid…

Go to the ANLA Knowledge Center, “This is Garden Idol!” page for more information on which performances air when and how the voting works.

If you are new to The Weeding Gnome, you might not know the story of how the ANLA staff decided to amp up the New Plant presentations a bit. In previous years, people got up on stage, showed a few images on the screen and talked for a few minutes about their new plant introductions.

BORING!

Here’s the scary part…YOU and I get to see it for the FIRST time when the voting begins on Monday, April 19th. They did not show us a preview. I have no idea how ridiculous I looked or sounded and quite frankly…this could be one of the most horrifically embarrassing things I’ve ever done in my career.

Yet it will be made public for the World (and me…) to see on Monday. Oy!

Here’s how it works. One presenter gets launched every three days, but there is an entire week to vote on each plant. You get to choose your favorite plant from each presenter and those become the semi-finalists. Once the semi-finalists are announced, the voting will begin all over and you will get to vote for your true favorite. Warning: They will ask you to register before you can vote. It’s a free, brief site registration that will be required to view the videos and to vote. It is as simple as filling out contact information and answering three questions about your business (none of them are financial or ask for business stats, size, staff etc…). They are trying to gather information about the demographics of our voters, so please fill out the short registration when they prompt you.

So vote for Plants Nouveau and pass it along to your friends and family. If they don’t know me, apologize in advance for my silliness and tell them I really don’t display my “milkshake” very often and this is the FIRST time I’ve ever done it in public.

If one of my plants wins, we get $5,000 worth of free advertising, which would be a great help in getting the word out about these great new plants, so please vote.

I promise you’ll be nothing short of entertained, but my true hope is this presentation is lively enough to hold your attention and have you thinking differently about how new plants are marketed. I didn’t get up on stage and shake my booty for nothing!

Maybe if everyone put this much passion and personality into their marketing, shopping for plants would be a really cool, entertaining experience.

So mark your calendars for Monday, April 19th and let the voting BEGIN!!!

As for the global embarrassment – they say any PR is good PR, right?

After my trip to visit Sinclair on Monday, I took another look at The River Series in my garden. One of my favorites of the series is ‘Delaware’. This reminds me, I should get these planted out on the University of Delaware (my alma mater) campus this year. Delaware has deep rosy-pink buds that mature to creamy pink blooms on deep maroon stems. The leaves are very begonia like and I’ve often argued with the tiarella ignorant that they are indeed tiarellas and not begonias while exhibiting at trade shows.

The leaves are soft and fuzzy with great pubescence. This selection trails quite a bit. Plants I planted in late 2008 have spread about 24-30 inches in my garden. Tiarella cordifolia ‘Delaware’ is gorgeous planted with other dry shade companions like Japanese forest grass (Hakonechloa macra) and purple leaved coral bells (Heuchera sp.). This trailing selection appears dainty, but it’s truly a survivor and one tough perennial ground cover in my garden.

Until then, enjoy this weather and Happy Weeding!

Angela Treadwell Palmer
President, Plants Nouveau