Back in the winter at the fantastic ANLA Management Clinic, I said that the new motto at my farm was, “If it ain’t got no bloom, we ain’t got no room.” (Forgive the double negatives; I’m a Southerner.) This is a pretty radical statement since my business was basically built on evergreen shrubs. In the past few years growers like myself have lost a lot of money--easily millions--because the green shrubs we thought we could sell when we planted them…didn’t. We threw them away. The video below was from last summer (2010), and at the time I thought the market for green shrubs couldn’t get any worse. It hasn’t gotten much better. Thankfully, this year we haven’t had to discount, but there remains a huge amount of unused production space and we’re still throwing away many thousands of plants nobody wants to buy.
Even though I said “No Bloom, No Room,” I’m still in love with green shrubs and am alert to any hint that they may become fashionable again. Last month, I posted here about a catalog from a furniture company that loves green shrubs too, and I promised to share a few other things that I’ve been sitting on.
Here’s one: again, from all the way back at the ANLA Clinic, where Lloyd Traven of Peace Tree Farm provided many of the plants for the decorations. While they’re not shrubs, they are green.
And then, in July at the OFA, the Peace Tree Farm booth was a very happening place with lots of traffic. Here’s a cool video from GrowerTalks magazine:
So, that’s one grower in my own market region that seems to be bucking the “gotta bloom” tyranny.
Here’s two magazine covers from Garden Design this year, the one on the left from August and the current issue (Oct/Nov) at right.
Here’s another: an article from the British newspaper The Telegraph titled “Return of the Unsung Shrub.” It begins by saying:
Give a shrub to your average garden designer and I am not sure that he or she would know what to do with it. They are so out of fashion. In defiance of the grasses-and-perennials tyranny, however, one leading designer has stood firm.
And ends with:
Other designers need to wake up to the potential of this forgotten treasure chest of plants. The revival and rehabilitation of shrubs is long overdue.
Nice to hear, but it’s not going to change my plans. We are going to only plant what we sold at full price this year, and maybe a little less. We’ll have several acres of empty beds and hopefully we’ll sell out.
Still, part of me thinks that a “revival and rehabilitation” is possible, that the color GREEN is close to a tipping point and could become the new trend with some creative work and the right marketing. I recently came across Sara Tambascio’s blog, ‘Sara’s Green Space,’ where she mentioned:
As someone said during the Town Hall, we are just one tweak away from going gangbusters, like that little kid who’s dancing slightly off beat. I believe it, too. We may need just one little tweak to really rock it. How about these? (She continues with 5 “crazy” ideas that might edge us closer to a tipping point.) Read it here.
I really love that image of a kind of nerdy kid who’s just not quite in time with the music…and then he gets it. Is it possible to make the nerd (green shrubs) cool? That’s what I’m thinking about. “Do the Urkel!” ~Art