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Armchair Gardening
For many northern gardeners, the planting season is still far off. Cold winter days indoors give gardeners a chance to find out what is new in gardens, by reading through some of the seed catalogs that have been accumulating since the Christmas holiday. Americans spend over $3 billion on mail order and online gardening sales. Avid gardeners know that they will find much more variety in the catalogs than can be stocked on the shelf at the garden centre. Each year catalogs tout the latest, greatest varieties to get the gardener dreaming. Where do all these new plants come from?
Most of the new plant introductions featured in seed catalogs are developed for market by one of seven major seed companies that do large scale breeding research. Smaller seed companies also develop new varieties, but are likely focus on a small-specialized area of the market. And researchers never know where the next source of good plant genes will surface. Universities, seed banks and home gardeners may make initial discoveries that are later improved upon by larger plant breeding companies.
Recent trends in the garden are tending toward old varieties developed through centuries of tradition. Many catalogs and online sources are featuring rare heirloom varieties and introducing exotic vegetables that may be common in other parts of the world.
Many gardeners' eyes are bigger than their gardens. A little time spent on practical garden planning - to determine just where all those new seeds will grow - may be another good way for a gardener to occupy time in the winter.
- Garden dreams are made from seed catalogs from the Pocono Record
- Seed catalogs sow desire from the Lexington Herald-Leader
- Taste for exotic vegetables grows from the San Francisco Chronicle
- A new way to find old seeds from the Seattle Times
- Virtual Gardening from the Boise Weekly
- Seed Catalog ‘Lingo’ from The Daily Ledger
Posted by Eric La Fountaine at 2:50 PM on February 14, 2006
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Comments
Eyes bigger than our gardens?
Can it be the plant pragmatist can't grasp the gardener's penchant for collecting? Or is it the tired heart of a gardener disappointed one too many a time?
I remember Tony Avent asking if you always knew where you were going to wear shoes when you bought them. So why would you have to have mapped out where each plant was going to go when you planted it? Of course, he is in the business of huckstering plants, bless his enthusiastic self.
Still, the pragmatist would only stick with the tried and true. In his garden, we would be inundated with Stella d'Oro daylilies, boxwoods, yews and marigolds (though Burpee could remind you of a time when marigolds were the new thing in the plant world and they were in the horticultural avant gaarde for its tagentes hybrids).
Maybe if pragmatism ruled we'd have no gardens at all, since pragmatically I am not sure one could rationalize the effort or monetary expenditure of a garden. At a Kansas City-area garden tour last summer, several of the gardeners whose work was on display said they started out just wanting to cut down on mowing. Mowing would have taken only a couple hours a week. The garden each had grown instead took tending every day. The pragmatist's argument doesn't hold up.
Save the "tsk, tsk," and give that catalog-peering garden spendthrift his due for creating the industry that makes this forum possible. Give him his due, too, for being enamored of a world of possibilities. Too often we get weighted down by reasons things can't be. Too often we don't get inspired by the way things could be.
Chuck
Posted by: chuckrkc at February 19, 2006 3:11 PM
