How the Meatball Bounces

John Friel

New variety fever never gets old, does it? We who live and breathe plants— be they annuals, perennials, woodies or edibles—crave new introductions with an ardor even a car showroom can’t inspire.

And we certainly don’t lack for new models. Never before have so many cultivars entered the market each year. Every trade show, trade magazine and enewsletter devotes significant space to What’s New—new colors, new forms, new hybrids.

But doesn’t it seem we’re awash in a sea of “me, too!” plants, a slow parade of minuscule advances in too-familiar genera? And that too often, “new form” means smaller, tighter and more compact than the last intro, which was smaller, tighter and more compact than its predecessor?

For reasons that have everything to do with commerce and nothing to do with what’s good for gardens or gardeners, breeders seem bent on turning everything, even scrambling ramblers like gaura, into densely-wadded flowering meatballs.

Tall plants like grasses and big ’uns like helianthus too often get short shrift at retail and that’s a shame for our landscapes. This Space has railed against that trend before, to no avail, and this column won’t convert anyone from the cult of compactness either.

Maybe it’s greedy to lust after more than constant baby steps and occasional great strides in genera we already know and trust. After all, our offerings are already pretty damned good. Triple Crowns, Grand Slams and truly NEW!! plants come along, but rarely for a good reason: They’re hard.

The biggest Wow! of recent memory, in perennials, came when the first non-purple coneflowers burst on the scene in 2002. Hundreds of cultivars later, the tremors of that leap forward are still being felt. Unfortunately, many color breaks proved far less trustworthy than good ol’ Echinacea purpurea, but they’re getting better. The industry is hungry for another seismic event of that magnitude, with aftershocks that rock on a decade later.

If forced at gunpoint to guess an upcoming Big Genus, I’d give a cautious nod to mukdenia and its hybrid mukgenia. There’s much to recommend them: no pests or diseases, great cold hardiness, branched panicles of white flowers, attractive foliage with a lovely color shift— and (groan) a neat, mounded, short-statured habit. They have real retail and garden potential, if gardeners can stomach those awful names. I’m something of a stickler for Latin nomenclature, but I’d make an exception here.

Some would argue for eucomis, a.k.a. pineapple lily, which is striking but not very hardy. A hyacinth relative, it seems fated to tender bulb status unless it can learn to handle American winters.

Another dark horse candidate for the perennial garden: Hardy orchids. Shedding their long-standing reputation as prima donnas grown by obsessive eccentrics, potted orchids are now America’s second-favorite houseplant, outsold only by poinsettia. Disclaimer: Most sales are of the most-cooperative genus, Phalaenopsis. Even so, it’s still amazing to see orchids travelling the well-trodden path from oddity to commodity.

Can that popularity be transplanted from windowsill to border? Stay tuned. Technicians are working on the situation. Cypripedium (Lady’s slipper) is a possibility, as is bletilla. Both genera are native to North America, a big selling point that keeps getting bigger. I can hear the purists groaning, but I’m an unabashed admirer of nativars. As nativity drives sales, they’ll be more and more key.

Perhaps I’m too fussy. Several genera—agastache, gaura, helleborus— have risen from relative obscurity to widespread use in recent years. Future columns on this topic will likely find us driving any number of unexpected roads.

God, I hope so. I'm about meatballed out. GP

John Friel is marketing manager for Emerald Coast Growers and a freelance writer.