A Glowing Success

Katie Elzer-Peters

In the horticulture world, there’s “Before Canna Tropicanna” and “After Canna Tropicanna.” The introduction of this herbaceous perennial/bulb to the market in 1998 coincided conveniently with the “everything everywhere tropical” craze that hit the horticulture world. Or, possibly, it helped spur that trend. While homeowners have cooled it, slightly, with the hardy bananas and elephant ears everywhere, Canna Tropicanna—brought to market by Anthony Tesselaar Plants—has had remarkable staying power. During its time on the market, they’ve sold 10 million units of Tropicanna. Orders aren’t slowing down, either.

Anthony Tesselaar grew up a third-generation nurseryman. “It was the family business and your family starts working you when you’re about 4 years old. You pull weeds in the greenhouse.” They ran a successful mail-order bulb business.

“At a time when direct-mail response was around 3%, on average, we had 25% to 30%. The plants had to be exceptionally good for us to carry them. Over a period of time, people come to trust that what you’re offering is very good if it performs well in the garden.”

He continues to apply the same criteria to plants he brings to market:
• Easy to grow in the consumer’s garden
• Long lifespan
• Readily and easily grown by the wholesaler

Canna Tropicanna hit all points. Anthony was visiting Keith Kirsten in South Africa when Keith said to him, “I have a plant I want you to look at.” Anthony said, “He brought me around the corner and there was a canna lily, but it had this variegation of colors—almost a kaleidoscope of colors—on each individual leaf. It was early in the morning and the sun was shining behind the leaves. The plants were glowing. I said, ‘Geez, what in the dickens is that? That is so exciting!’”

Keith had come across the plant in an old nurseryman’s garden. While walking through the garden, he saw what would become Tropicanna. It was a sport of Wyoming, which contributed the dark-colored leaves. He asked the gardener if he could have a clump so he could take it back to his garden and have a look at it.

Anthony said to Keith, “If it is a canna, that’s great because everyone can grow it. There’s no good in having a brilliant plant that nobody can grow.” His colleagues weren’t so sure. “When I came back from my trip, I told them about a beautiful new plant I saw. I was so ecstatic about it—about the colors and how they pop. I said it was a canna and they said, ‘Ugh. You must be joking. A canna is a canna.’ I said, ‘This is an unbelievable, extraordinary canna. Like no other.’ They were still very negative. We brought it in to evaluate. Once they saw it and saw it in bloom, there was no going back.” He describes Tropicanna as “a phenomenal breakthrough in the canna genus.”

Feedback from the market was instant and positive. The plant is propagated both vegetatively and through tissue culture. “It can be difficult to have stability in tissue culture of striped plants. We always grow out test plants from a batch to make sure they’re going to do what we want. If they don’t, we throw them out and start over.”

Anthony takes his job as a breeder seriously. “Gardeners are trusting of nurseries and will buy what they’re told. It’s up to us to make sure that what’s available is good.” GP

Katie Elzer-Peters is a garden writer and owner of The Garden of Words, LLC, a marketing and PR firm handing mostly green-industry clients. Contact her at Katie@thegardenofwords.com or at www.thegardenofwords.com.