Garden catalog season: New isn't necessarily better
The 2011 garden catalogs are here, offering tempting new plants. But are the new plants really better than the older ones?
Supertunias are 'petunias on steroids,' hybrids bred to have small flowers and good disease-resistance, to self-prune, and to bloom from spring until fall. This is Proven Winners' Supertunia Red, a trailing cultivar that's ideal for growing in containers. It's an example of plant breeding at its best.
Photo courtesy of Karan Davis Cutler
While it was still 2010, the 2011's seed catalogs began arriving. I鈥檓 not complaining: So many horticultural companies either have gone belly up or are exclusively online with their inventory that I鈥檓 grateful for every catalog that finds its way to my mailbox.
Garden catalogs are high on my winter reading list, as they were with former New Yorker editor Katharine White. Her shrewd catalog reviews, often filled with grumbles about breeders鈥� obsession with the new and different, were collected as "" by her husband, E.B. White, in 1979. They still make good reading.
This year鈥檚 catalogs contain plenty of flowers that deserve a place in every garden, including many species and heirloom and open-pollinated varieties.
These are big improvements
There also are scores of newer cultivars that are stronger, longer-blooming, and more hardy and disease resistant 鈥� just plain better 鈥� than the varieties I ordered a decade ago.
What鈥檚 not to love about a daylily like 鈥樷��, which blooms longer than one day? Who would want to give up hanging baskets filled with , vigorous hybrid petunias that are everblooming, self-cleaning, and disease resistant? [See first photo above.]
Not I.
For these and for mildew-resistant bee balms, asters that stay vertical without my help, and much more, I鈥檓 thankful.
Do we really need these plants?
But in the Grumble Department, I鈥檓 skeptical of any flower whose catalog description begins with 鈥渦nlike anything you鈥檝e ever grown.鈥� Over the years I鈥檝e learned that 鈥渦nique鈥� and 鈥渘ew鈥� are not always virtues.
Hollyhocks used to be simple and beautiful and perfect for . Now most varieties have extra petals and resemble the Kleenex flowers I once made to decorate for the junior prom. Among them is [see photo at left], which not only has cluttered double blossoms but is only 30 inches tall.
It may have won an All America Selections award, but it doesn鈥檛 win a place on my seed list.
Or , which is a 鈥渄ouble pom-pom鈥� and 鈥渨ithout spurs.鈥� Who would want a columbine without its striking spurs? And if I wanted a pom-pon, I would grow or an .
What is it with breeders who insist on making flowers look wholly different from what they鈥檝e looked like for centuries? Why would anyone want a coneflower to look a zinnia? That鈥檚 the lamentable fate of Echinacea. purpurea 鈥楶ink Poodle鈥�. [See second photo above for what a purple coneflower should look like.]
Call me a horticultural fuddy-duddy, an aesthetic stick-in-the-mud. Taste is personal, as my fellow blogger Judy Lowe reminded me when she e-mailed that she never recommends florist鈥檚 cyclamens to Southern gardeners, an indoor plant that thrives in my cool Vermont house.
And some love 鈥楺ueeny Purple鈥�.
But I still think hollyhocks ought to have five petals. Sunflowers ought to be taller than 24 inches, pansies ought to have faces [see third photo above], and flowering tobacco ought to have fragrance.
Compact, strong stems, disease-resistance, and improved hardiness I like, but enough of the extra petals, frills, ruffles, and fringes, the weird colors, and other artless embellishments.
Every year hundreds of flower varieties disappear from commerce. While we all should mourn losses in the flora gene pool 鈥� and support the work of and other preservation organizations 鈥擨 admit that I won鈥檛 grieve if 鈥楶ink Poodle鈥� and 鈥楲ime Sorbet鈥� and few other breeding excesses don鈥檛 appear in the 2012 catalogs. R.I.P.
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Karan Davis Cutler is one of nine regular bloggers at Diggin鈥� It. She's a former magazine editor and newspaper columnist and the author of scores of garden articles and more than a dozen books, including 鈥淏urpee - The Complete Flower Gardener鈥� and 鈥淗erb Gardening for Dummies.鈥� She now struggles to garden in the unyieldingly dense clay of Addison County, Vt., on the shore of Lake Champlain, where she is working on a book about gardening to attract birds and other wildlife. To read more by Karan, click here.