Sustaining Through Dark Times…

There’s so much going on this week, I don’t know where to begin.

We had our first frost this week on Tuesday and it totally caught me off guard in the morning. I left no time to scrape the car windshield. Heck, I couldn’t even find the scrapper.

So, the peppers, tomatoes and beans are gone, but the Swiss chard is still growing strong and it could feed us into January. We’ll see.

Good and bad things happened to me this week.

We moved our office. Boy, was that an exercise in cleaning and de-cluttering. I spent nearly two mornings going through old trade show booth decorations and costumes for mannequins. It was fun and certainly a trip down memory lane.

I gave up my office to have more money to spend on marketing. It was a hard thing to do, but in these down turned economic times, something had to give. So I gave up the office. Working from home isn’t so bad, but I did have to rent a 10 foot by 10 foot storage unit for all of my trade show booth supplies. It seems everyone is much, much happier with me here. The dogs are happy to have the company. The office kitty is just as happy to lay on my desk at home on the third floor now.

I work way more hours since there’s no commute and I’m getting a whole lot done. It’ll be a different story in spring because I’ll be yearning to get out in the garden. That’s when I will find it hard to stay locked on the third floor working all day.

I’m sure I’ll figure out some happy medium by then.

Something else good happened this week. I stumbled upon a forest of Osage orange (Maclura pomifera) in all of their lime green glory. I have many, exciting plans for how I will use all 50 that I collected to decorate in a wild and crazy way this year for Christmas. Those combined with the bag full of Kentucky coffee tree pods I found in the park a few weeks ago will make for some lovely spray painting shenanigans. I’m thinking lime green and Christmas red.

As if that wasn’t enough joy for one week, I had one of the most wonderful experiences I’ve had in a while on Wednesday morning at my daughter’s school. She is three and attends pre-school at the Waldorf School. Waldorf is a school filled with wonderfully kind, ecologically sound, German based philosophies. I was lucky enough to be able to attend their Winter Garden Celebration.

They make a spiral out of greens on the floor and make the room dark and each child must walk the spiral and have their candle lit by “source” (an angel like being) in the center. Then the children place their candle wherever they wish among the greens on the floor as they walk the spiral once again to exit.

Here’s the official description from the Waldorf School:

“The Waldorf “Winter Garden” coincides with the beginning of the Christian observation of advent (four weeks preceding Christmas) and the Jewish festival of Hanukkah, the celebration of the miracle of the oil lamp in the temple which continued to burn even though its oil had run out. In the Winter Garden, the children traverse an evergreen spiral, to light a candle from the source, deep within the center of the spiral. As we approach the darkest day of the year, we must search for that inner light and strength to sustain us through dark times.”

And, even though I was forbidden to take pictures, amazingly, I found a video from another school on YouTube. The power of YouTube is amazing, isn’t it?

As you can see from the video, it is a spiritual celebration. By going into the spiral with less light and coming out again with more light, the glow of light is to be taken in an held during the darkest, coldest months of winter.

Watching three and four year-olds go through the spiral and then experiencing it myself, it was indeed peaceful. The glow of the light on their cherubic faces was lovely and the intense looks as they concentrated to pick the perfect spot in which to lay their candle was heartwarming.

It was my first time and it was wonderful. Why don’t we all have a winter garden spiral?

Sometimes, peace and the warmth of candles in a quiet room feel good in this crazy, electronic media-filled, fast paced world.

I think this would be something nice to offer garden center and design customers. To me, it was a cross between lighting a candle in a Catholic cathedral and walking a labyrinth. Both can be very spiritual, enlightening events. I highly suggested doing both, if you have not.

Sadly though, I can’t leave you on that high note because a few bad things have happened this week too.

Today at noon, they closed the doors to Carolina Nurseries. The fight is over for J and Linda Guy. They fought till the bitter end to save their nursery, but the banks fought back.

In an email this morning, Linda Guy wrote:

“Dear Friends… Today marks a day we hoped would never come. The closing of Carolina Nurseries. Sad, but filled with so many wonderful memories, all of which you are a part of.”

Not to worry, though. Linda has wonderful plans for their new plant introduction company, Novalis, which is growing and planing for a terrific, prosperous future.

That being said, it is sad news indeed and remarkably, that’s not all we heard today on the news wires.

Apparently, Monrovia Growers, one of the largest wholesale nurseries in the U.S. has been given a January 31 deadline to increase their spring bookings by $22 million dollars or possibly liquidate it all. They are asking their customers to increase their spring bookings so they do not have to sell the excess to chain stores or worse, liquidate and foreclose.

That’s a lot of money.

Money that struggling independent garden centers (IGC’s) might not have to give them. A group of garden centers has vowed to rally behind Monrovia to keep them from selling to the chains since Monrovia’s mission all along has been to sell to garden centers only.

What will happen? I think in order for them to stay in business Monrovia will have to find a way to sell to the chains, yet still differentiate what they sell to garden centers in some way.

If IGC’s only make up 35-40% of the business in the U.S. , how can a large wholesaler like Monrovia ever expect to make ends meet without selling to the chains?

I believe, as a whole, our industry needs to do a bit of soul searching. Those that figure out the key to survival in this mess of an economy will no doubt come out on top, but who will survive?

That’s the golden question we should all be asking. Perhaps a walk through the Winter Garden spiral would do us all a bit of good.

Take care, stay warm if it’s cold where you are, and Happy Weeding!

Angela Treadwell-Palmer
President, Plants Nouveau

PS. – I totally forgot one more great thing is happening this week. You might remember, last February, I totally embarrassed my self by performing on stage in front of the ANLA Management Clinic in their first-ever Garden Idol event. If you weren’t reader this then, here’s the issue about Garden Idol.

Well, well…much to my surprise, Garden Idol is much like the Jelly of the Month Club that Clark Griswold received from his boss in National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation – it’s the gift that keeps on giving. On the Better Homes and Garden website our very own Stokesia laevis ‘Elf’ is running a neck-and-neck race for first place with Hydrangea Vanilla Strawberry from Bailey’s Nursery.

So…here’s what you can do to help. Go to this link and register on the BHG site. I swear, I registered a few months ago and I’ve not received any contact from them, so it’s not a way to get your address to send you info you don’t want. I promise, they are just keeping track of who is voting.

Don’t be afraid. Just do it. Log on and vote for our Elf!

This little guy deserves to win!!! If you all vote, I bet we can beat that silly hydrangea. Hydrangeas always get the glory.

Elf is a short, compact form of Stoke’s aster with brilliant violet-blue blooms that face up, not down and when it blooms, the blooms are help up like asters without the usually spidery arms you find on most Stoke’s asters. Elf matures to 6-8” tall by 10-12″ wide, it’s great for salty road medians and municipal plantings with no irrigation. Elf is also a wonderful container plant for urban gardens and it makes a lovely statement en masse in any garden.

Try it. I know you’ll love it! we gave way samples last year in Raleigh at the Garden Writers Symposium. I would love to get some feedback from those of you who planted yours. Please let me know what you think.

If you love the movie National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation and appreciate excessive holiday decorations and good old fashioned family Christmases like I do, then friend me on Facebook and read my Christmas Vacation quote of the day. I’ll post one each day until Christmas Day. It’s hysterical.