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New Viola Odorata Blues
In the early 1980s, I attempted to resurrect large-scale production (which is to say any scale of production) of the fancy old perfumed lapel violets. The only place I found any remnants of the past glory days was Southern Europe. I also attempted to purchase a distinguished perennial seed specialist breeder and producer in Northern Europe. He turned out to be using, as some of his production sources, seed collected in public gardens after closing time and paying off the guards. “Next.” In 1988, I sent one of the breeders from my former company—a specialist in pot plant and bedding annuals and cut flowers from seed—to Nepal to find rare taxa of garden plants. Now employed part-time at Heronswood, Simon Crawford returned after two months climbing in the Himalayas with many collections, including unusual impatiens and salvia. Oddly, few of them sold especially well.In the late 80s, I became interested in bypassing the greenhouse-grower-imposed standards of cosmetic beauty at the point of sale. Bedding plants are typically “forced” into a premature senescence in order to bloom heavily in small retail containers. The resulting transplant shock—the stressed out plants stop flowering in order to divert energy to their roots to adapt to the new garden soil—disappoints unsophisticated consumers who blame themselves, if they even notice the effect. With few exceptions, bedding plants bought at retail bloom well for only a few weeks at best. Their display is delayed and suboptimal. They never catch up with the fleeting summer.
The purchase of Burpee, which had been badly bruised by a classic late 80s leveraged buy-out, presented itself and I saw a way to sell by mail “green”, or non-flowering, annuals that, though vegetative, were on the verge of blooming. The roots and shoots have been gently grown and, since little energy has been directed to sexual reproduction atop the plant, transplant shock has been eliminated. Customers can enjoy the mostly tropical annuals at the time the tropics have arrived to our northerly latitudes—what we call “summer”. They bloom fully and completely. It is analogous to a vine-ripened versus supermarket tomato—something with which we’re familiar.
Then, in the late 90s, a few of my employees raved to me about “the best nursery in the world” and “the greatest private botanical garden in the world”. Of course, they were right, if a cult following is how superlatives are defined. We bought the dream. We also did a mediocre job of due-diligence. The rest is history. However helium-filled the nursery was, the enormous collection of “new and unusual” taxa turned out to be, well, new and unusual. The challenge was to broaden and enlarge the audience. That resulted ultimately in relocating the nursery—young plants in pots—to the demographic breadbasket and superior logistic facility of the parent company in the mid-Atlantic states of Pennsylvania and Delaware.
Based on scurrilous attacks in the media and cheap shots from competitors, many folks thought we’d either moved or dismantled the research and display gardens. Thus, many in the horticultural community concluded that, despite buying the business and property at a premium in 2000 and providing investment and stewardship for it for 6 years, we’d bought it recently and were “flipping” it. People publicly labeled me “a traitor”. All of the complaints were based on misinformation. Most were based on dark, malevolent, and basic human impulses. We began as the hated “interlopers”. Whenever we announced changes in procedures or policies, we were greeted with no support either in the nursery or the Kitsap/Bainbridge community, where most of the customers lived. Therefore, I fully expected the talk of “our pound of flesh” from everyone. Pity, but there it is. “No good deed goes unpunished.”
Mail order and internet plant sales have roared this past season, our first one operating in the east. The Open Day attendance at Fordhook Farm in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, has been extraordinarily strong in this, its first full year. With over 60 acres of beautiful farm and landscaped acres, including over 7 of gardens, and an assortment of early colonial buildings, we have a great opportunity to receive and serve our customers. We grow, display and research over 3,000 taxa. Perhaps now I shall pick up where I left off on the Viola odorata project.
Come see us!
George, please do pick up where you left off on V. odorata. I would love to see them re-enter the market in a big way.
I was at Heronswood last year for your wonderful Hellebore Open Day, and, of course, bought hellebores. ‘Kingston Cardinal’ is about to bloom in my garden right now (3/15/08).
Keep up the good work. If you have a chance, take a look at my website. If you like it, I would welcome the opportunity to include Heronswood as a link on my site.
Elisabeth Ginsburg