May / June 2002
If you peruse the Contents page of this issue, you will note that three of our features are stories about plants that offer us far more choices than we dreamed possible only 10 years ago. Chicago-hardy climbing roses. Miniature petunias. Coleus in snappy new colors. Although the green industry nation-wide continues to experience turmoil due to bankruptcies, consolidations, and legal challenges, things are looking pretty good for the consumer.
When I first attended EnglandU`s Chelsea Flower Show in 1989, I toured the displays with mouth agape, madly scribbling down names of plants I had never before seen. A marvelous bleeding heart, Dicentra eximia ?Stuart BoothmanU`, with salmon-pink flowers and lacy, turquoise leaves tipped with that same salmon pink. A Virginia bluebell (Mertensia ciliata) whose white flowers were bordered with blue. Exciting stuff.
A few days later I visited Oxford and headed straight for New College (founded in 1379 but it was new at the time). I entered the garden and stopped in my tracks. The cause? A 100-foot long perennial border dominated by repeated mounds of the catmint (Nepeta) cultivar ?Six Hills GiantU`. Huge misty clouds of lavender, accented by pink, purple, and little splashes of yellow. I just stood there, transfixed.
I flew home with a song in my heart but a chip on my shoulder. Why werenU`t more of the plants I had seen in England available over here? And how could anyone say that gardening was AmericaU`s favorite leisure time activity when our gardens didnU`t begin to compare with those in England? (I later heard that the pollsters consider you a gardener if you have a philodendron on the window sill or mow your lawn. Call me a curmudgeon, but if mowing the lawn is gardening, then vacuuming the carpet is interior decorating.) I also flew back with a steely determination to acquire ?Six Hills GiantU`, no matter what the cost.
I found the plant but had to send off to North Carolina to do it. Today, ?Six Hills GiantU` is available locally. Today, Chicagoland retailers are growing and selling more than ever. Choices abound.
This is the fun of a whole new gardening year, unfolding like some giant map to adventures unknown. First comes February when I make my seed choices. Then thereU`s May when I select perennials?Land I?NselectO?L is the operative word here. I canU`t have everything I want. I must choose, with a decision in favor of hollyhocks meaning that I wonU`t have room for cannas. Peony ?Krinkled WhiteU` trumps a new iris.
So itU`s a real treat that we can show you new developments in hardy roses, foliage plants and petunias, but you, too, will be forced to choose one thing over another and live with the results.
Nothing wrong with that. ItU`s what grownups do. In a way, our current issue offers a metaphor for life itself.
