Where have all the flowers gone?

 

Ed Bowen, owner of Opus Plants, drove all the way from Rhode Island to give a memorable lecture for the Hardy Plant Society. I had to have a photo along with a couple people from the audience, Charles Cresson, Ed Bowen and Ron Rabideau.

 

It was a full house at co-host Scott Arboretum to see photos of interesting and beautiful plants for zone 6/7 and they must be somewhat salt tolerant to boot since the nursery is on a peninsula. What I didn’t expect was Ed’s insightful presentation on the state of the horticultural marketplace. “We are almost embarrassed to say we are growing a plant just for the flowers,” was only one example of his typically unspoken revelations. He told us that he gave a plant to a local garden display only to find it removed in the summer as having uninteresting foliage. If they had waited for the fall/winter flower show they would have been rewarded with billowing clouds of blue. He felt this has grown out of many years of emphasis on colored foliage at the expense of texture and flowers by the media and retailers. It was amazing to hear such frank reflections on market trends and his appraisal of how the much sought-after Generation X gardener is misunderstood and mislead. I would strongly suggest green industry trade groups invite him to speak to get their symposiums buzzing.

Plant photos were not just a plant catalogue review but an illustrative journey with species lined up next to each other for comparison, references to who brought it to the US from where, hybrids from England and Japan, and lots of “why isn’t this in everyone’s garden” because it’s just a great plant. For example: Brunnera ‘Gordano Gold”, Sanguisorba ‘Midnight’s Child”, Hydrangea involucrata ‘Yokudanka”, Schizophragma integrifolia var, faureri , Helleborus thibetanus, Bergenia pacumbis all drew oo’s and ah’s. We all sat there nodding our heads while scribbling down all sorts of pertinent details. By the end of the tightly moderated timeframe (he set an alarm so he would finish precisely within the allotment) groups of audience members were figuring out when they would go to Rhode Island!