Lectures
Sue and I just gave a talk to our beloved town on our plant hunting travails and triumphs this last Saturday as part of the Jefferson County Master Garden Winter Lecture Series. It was so much fun talking to friends and neighbors about what we do and why we do it. It was such a relief looking out and seeing friends as well as faces you recognize but don't know but still gaining comfort from the recognition. Thank you all for being there - we were pretty sleepless over this but you made it so easy.
The theme of the series is sustainability and what better than to feature us as local growers with recycle-reuse-and-exhaust every organic option first as a speakers. Ignorance is truly bliss and we as pro nursery people know way too much. We know what the conventional production nursery does in terms of prophylactic pesticide applications and it is appalling. We try to grow healthy plants which largely create their own resistance as we don't do the pesticide thing. Except for slugs and then minimal slugbait. We have had to modify our techniques here to accomdate the local biota. We can't drag flats across the floor but have to lift them straight up as there is a good chance there is a newt underneath hanging out for the winter. The greenhouses are alive with frogs and the LBJ's (Little Brown Jobs), those homogenous wee birds in the finch-wren-sparrow complex, are simply annoying scratching our hazelnut shell container mulch all over hell and gone in search of stray nutmeats.
Our lecture topic of Plant Hunting in Asia felt right too excepting the carbon downside of getting there. We know we have saved specific populations of a particular plant from extinction by collecting the seed, keeping careful documentation and growing it on here. Someday we might be able to offer these plants back to their native country and that will be the best validation of what we do.
Currently we do distribute plants from our collections to several botanical gardens and arboreta. This is important to get the plants disseminated as there is nothing worse than having the only one of something and then losing it. If you have that affliction, get over it. Give a piece to your best friend at least because life and nature is fickle and it is great to get a new start of a prized plant back after you have lost it. We are keepers of the flame for a surpising number of gardeners and when we start doing the tally nothing pleases us more than to give back to those who shared with us because it works both ways. We have gotten Dactylorhiza back from Lee and Carlina back from Linda for example. Plant people are the best. With the exception of a few who have perverted plants to their own gain, I believe the world would be a far kinder and gentler and sensible place if it were run by plantpeople. Except for those of you who keep trying to be Tropicalissimo in a temperate zone. I mean, the economy can only stand a national party for so long before collapsing. But maybe Neil is right. It probably is better to burn out than fade away. Are your ears burning Brian?
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