we kiss a lot of frogs...

...but I guess that’s the nature of our business. After all, plants don’t predictably fall off the end of a production line in a factory.

But in a strange way, we love them because of that. They’re beautiful, ever changing, alive. But it’s also this dynamic aspect to each plant’s make-up that has us kissing many, many frogs more often than we’d like to admit.

So why is that? Well, we’re in the plants business and we’re only interested in very beautiful plants that are dependable and easy care. This may sound very straight forward, but it’s not. And that’s because the vision of loveliness we spot, as we wander through a breeder’s trial garden somewhere on the other side of the world, often turns out to be capricious.

We need to be sure that a plant will stay beautiful and grow without problems. To do that, we send a mini army of them out to all our trial gardens. Dotted around the globe the testing begins, using very tough selection criteria – and sometimes it’s many years later before we’re confident to name and ready our proven ‘prince’ for release. Yes... there’s a great deal more to it than just loading trucks full of the latest discovery and sending them off to garden centres around the world...

There was once a rose we’d spotted which was sky blue – an astonishing thing to the point where it was almost unbelievable. But there it was, as blue as blue and our hearts were racing. We sent the test plants out to see how they would fare in the big wide world, and waited. The first season the flowers were a bit mauve, but anything is to be expected when a plant is settling into a new location and adapting to foreign soil, water, light and air. Two year’s later the flowers were mauve to pink despite the fact that the original plants in the breeder’s garden were still blue. In the end, and this was after some years, we realised we’d kissed a frog, and instead of turning into a prince, it was going to remain a frog – a nice frog, but a frog nonetheless.

But every now-and-then, the frogs we kiss turn out to be winners, like the three wonder plants poised for release this coming spring - Black Adder Phormium, Tuxedo Ceanothus and the Amber Flower Carpet rose. I won’t say more about them here, but I will say that each one reminds us why our business is... kissing frogs.

hot spot

Here’s some hot news – we’re about to be release a new plant - the Black Adder Phormium - just as soon as the weather gets a little more conducive to gardening. Phormium fans take note because this New Zealand Flax is tougher and easier to grow than most, and it’s easily the blackest one around. Drought tolerant and growing to around four feet tall, it’s a great mix of upright, but with pendulous tips. Obviously it’s a candidate for large planter pots or anywhere else that begs for a stand-out plant. It’s also breathtaking when planted en masse with paler plants to accentuate its dark good looks. Stocks will be limited in its first season, so keep your eyes peeled.

 

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