Finding the right plant for the right site
A couple were leaving the nursery and noticed two perennial Hibiscus blooming in the display garden outside our front entry. I struck up a conversation. They noticed one plant had a white pot with Proven Winner on it and the other in a black pot. One of them remarked, “Oh, that’s a Proven Winner”, she pointed to the smaller plant. The more robust Hibiscus with many more blossoms was in a black pot. She wanted to know why the one in the black pot wasn’t a proven Proven Winner. I responded,” only Proven Winner plants go in Proven Winner pots”. I could tell from the customers response it didn’t matter the size or fullness of the plant in the black pot it must not be as good as the Proven Winner plant. They didn’t buy either, they had come in looking for the blueberry farm down the road from the nursery.
Every winter gardeners scour the garden magazines for the next ‘Plant of the Year’. These awards are garnered by savvy marketers and may the best plant or best pot design win. Are the plants worthy of the awards? Some times, the new cultivars are put through trials before entering the retail nurseries. And now, for the growers, it’s a race to find the next best plant, trial it and get it into the retail nursery. I recall not too long ago we got a new cultivar; it was the next best thing. But the giant flowers were too heavy for the stem to support and flopped to the ground, so we stopped offering that plant to the consumer. I’m sure our complaint was one of many and the grower did some genetic changes to give the plant better stem support. We now sell the plant. I don’t think it’s much different from the popular one that has been in the nurseries for years but marketing of the new cultivar wins the day.
How do plant shoppers distinguish these designer plants from the rest? Well, change the ubiquitous black pot to a colorful one with a promotional label that catches your eye. These are branded pots with their own unique color with a cute slogan stating that purchasing this pot is the best choice you can make as a gardener. Oops, did I say purchasing the pot, I meant purchasing the plant! To this point, I’m blind to the color of the pot. I see a plant regardless of pot color; is it full, healthy, does it have good flower set and good shape?
Some pots state they are an ‘American Beauty, or ‘American Native’. To start with, beauty is in the eye of the beholder and no marketer is going to tell me what is beautiful. And, ‘America Native’ is terribly misleading. America starts at the Arctic Circle and goes to Terra del Fuego in Southern Chile. What does that have to do with what is native to my region? Nursery owners have to do the educating when gardeners come in seeking plant tags and not the plant itself. Myself and my staff love to help with good plant decisions and we find we need to override the hyperbole of the marketing scheme to help them make good choices. We want you to put the right plant in your vehicle regardless of the colorful advertisement on the pot…we are colorblind.