“An insider view from the horticultural industry of America: practices, trends and challenges.”
Originally from England, Nicholas Staddon is a passionate plant lover and has spent nearly three decades in the US horticulture industry most recently as Company Spokesperson for Everde Growers. Everde is a major player with 6700 acres in production over 15 farms growing 33 million plants and 5000 varieties a year. Previously Nicholas worked with Monrovia for 25 years as Director of their New Plants Program where he worked closely with breeders, hybridizers, and professional plant explorers to create new plant varieties for the nursery sector: adjusting pest and disease resistance, care requirements, size, flower and foliage production etc. Nicholas’s roles mean that no one is better placed to give us an inside view of the nursery sector in America. He talks to us about Everde’s operations, its new plant introduction program and some of the breeders it works with around the world. He discusses current plant trends and cultural shifts in America. He also talks about some of the planting restrictions and water issues California is facing at the current time and the University of California Landscape Irrigation Trials. He suggests some good plant choices for the Southwestern region of America and other low water gardening areas. To cap his presentation off he shares his recommended book and magazine list.
Good evening and thank you all for joining our last talk of 2023 you are this the the the the last people standing very stalwart um supporters um I’m extremely grateful to Nicholas he’s a fellow MGS member and he stepped in to replace our scheduled speaker Bart O’Brien who was Co away
Overseas and he was slightly worried about having internet connection ction and also he wasn’t really in control of his particular schedule so I understood that Nicholas is English born as you will hear from his impeccable um talking um but he’s and strangely not very very Americanized for somebody who’s been resident in the
United States for about 39 years he came to his profession via farming ships and Falconer but by now he’s been around the world of Nur neries and plants for 30 or so years he’s currently company spokesman for Ev dig Growers this is a major PL player employing over 2,500
People in 15 Farms nearly 7,000 acres in production growing 33 million plants and 5,000 varietals a day a year uh he previously worked with Monrovia as the new plants program director and he knows exactly how this industry works from the inside and top down um tonight he’s
Going to talk about the ev’s operations its new plant production program how it works with breeders and also around the world he’ll discuss current current plant Trends cultural shifts in America talk about some of the planting restrictions and water issues facing California and the University of California landscape irigation
Trials um he’s going to suggest some good plant choses for the southwest region of America and other low water gardening areas and his recommended book and magazine list so that’s a lot for you to get through and us to get through without further Ado um I will hand over
To you Nicholas if you’d like to share your um screen thank you so much for being with us okay terrific C can you see everything yes that’s perfect and you can hear me okay yep terrific so F first off thank you so much for inviting me this is
Really a privilege and I really do enjoy the group on these uh presentations that we all get to see terrific my presentation is really quite different and the norm is that we we have very highly accomplished Landscape Architects or designers who talk about these fabulous Gardens that are in Europe or
Other places around the world um we had a young lady whose name I must confess I didn’t write down who does she’s English and did a lot of work in uh in Greece so we saw these great Gardens I’m going to take you on a Journey about some of the
Things that are going on in America right now and this is a this is a a very exciting time to be in plants in America very often I’ll read the term the golden the Golden Age of plants which some people said kind of back in the late 1800s and I think in America
Right now that we’re in the Golden Age of plants today it’s just fantastic um I I fell into the plant business quite by mistake I’m not a born and bred Gardener uh I didn’t grow up from Pender years in Plants I fell into plants probably in my early 30s and I
Can remember as a child being drug into uh my grandmother’s Garden on the on the on my father’s side come from a group of doctors being made to weed and pull dead plants and all this sort of thing and plant live plants though I never really
Cared for it but quite by chance I fell into the business uh was offered a job in the nursery business happened to be in the right place at the right time so it seemed a good idea at the time so agriculture which I started off in and horiculture were firmly joined at the
Hip So within a few days i’ just taken um a great liking to what I was doing so i’ I’ve been very fortunate to work for you know just a couple of companies while I’ve been in the states and a verie Growers the group I’m with now is a very
Very new company um this is uh our December is our third year we’re a conglomeration of uh three or four different companies which have been purchased by a very young man who loves plants so we’re familyowned we’re not publicly held and as Angela mentioned we’ve got a number of nurseries Across
America we Farm in Oregon California this is picture of the Oregon facility the nurseries are very very structured and they’re highly regulated as to what we can use on the nurseries they’re all closed systems we have to recycle our entire Water Area Water cannot leave the property uh this particular Nursery in
Oregon has an underground Canal around the nursery and then we have these massive reservoirs that we store water on site so which really help us during the um summer season we can yeah we probably recycle about 60 70% of our water and then during the winter time we
Need that space of water so we can keep the water from running off the farm in the Southern California nurseries and Florida they’re completely different it’s a a much um more tropical less Hardy group of plants and the picture on the top left hand side is
Down in a place called f Brook which is about 600 acres and there we we um there we grow um gardinas ban Villas hibiscus all those sorts of plants Florida in the bottom right hand area is unique it’s about 600 acres and they grow palms and
They grow Palms from like 4 feet high to 30 feet high and they grow Palms like corn there’s no other way to describe it and on the 16 uh on the 600 acre Nursery they only have about 40 people so it’s it’s a very um it’s a very
Interesting organization in the in the other Farms it’s about one person per acre the Palm Farms it’s very different you plant them and you you let the plants grow we’re heavily into new plants and probably about somewhere between 16 and 20% of all the plants we sell on an
Annual basis are are new and what’s even more interesting is that the whole plant business has changed worldwide so we work with um breeders hybridizers plant explorers and I’m going to introduce you to some key people in our industry not only in America but worldwide as well and of course these companies have
Sprung up plants have become extraordinarily valuable which which is great because the hardest part is to see get people to see the value implants so anyway this is one group we deal with called plants and they just have all sorts of you know lies or perennials or husters whatever it might be that
They’re collecting on a national basis and then for every plant we sell that um that we get from a plant like from a group like think plants we pay them a royalty and the royalty then goes back into the system and it allows the Breeders and the explorers to continue
The work they do so I I was fascinated and the last presentation the young lady was talking about Greece and she started talking about lucfilms or Texas Rangers that she’s using on some of her jobs so with the new plant business it it’s not just about new
Plant it’s about going back in time and discovering and bringing some of these plants which are absolute winners and can be great Foundation plants bringing these into the um into the uh the search light if you like and here’s a great example two plants I’m going to talk
About this is a um a Luc ofm called Convent Convent was introduced about 40 years ago and was actually bred down in San Antonio in Texas and it was bred on a vegetable it was a USDA United States Department of Agriculture um vegetable breeding site and the senior vegetable
Breeder decided he was going to try his hand at lucfilms because they grow naturally down there so created this great variety called convent which is probably the silverest of all the uh Texas Rangers the foliage is unique it’s a large uh a large leaf compared to many
And it has this wonderful bright sort of pink colored amus flower and the other guy and plant I wanted to mention a moralizers a gentleman called Lyn Larry Lyn Larry was a Texas professor and a great plantsman right the way through the Southwest his great chance discovery
That he found in the middle of a field one day there’s a lucapy called lind’s Legacy and what is unique about this particular variety um lucfilms are a great barometer of when we’re going to get rain so maybe like a week you know six days before we’re going to get some
Rain you’ll notice that all the lucfilms start flowering um they’re sensing this moisture change in the in the air so Lynn’s Legacy is unique in the fact that it doesn’t need that higher moisture in the air to balloon so this is just a terrific plant um I just hope plants
Like this we can um somehow figure out how to get to Europe and a couple of other plants this is a yaka filamentosa that is available in Europe This is a much hardier variety but has a unique color change this is a perennial yaka so on about that third or fourth year once
The plants established you’ll get this great um flag of flowers that comes up and then and as the flowers die you need to cut the stalk down and keep the plant nice and healthy you get this great color change also in the leaves during the Colder Weather and a new variety at
The other end of the scale is a gloriosa called bright star and bright star is produced by tissue culture which is a another presentation on how plants are created but what is unique about this is it’s very difficult to produce plants using this uh Laboratory process it’s very difficult to keep the variegation
In the plants but some bright spark figured out how to do that so um I’ve got uh two plants in my garden um uh they’re they’re terrific when they bloom but I you got to be patient so they normally take about four or five years before you’ll see a flower on them so
America is is broken down into numerous regions and I actually live in California so I I’m out here so if you can see my cursor and um it it’s really the desert you know a lot of people think this is a you know very kind of sort of tropical
Area it’s not it’s dry and it can have harsh planting condition so you know we live and die by the water I thought it might be fun just to talk about one couple of particular places in California so if some of you make the pilgrimage out here spring is a
Wonderful time to come and your visit can be uh even um even better if we’ve had some good winter rains and early spring rains this is a brand new National Monument that was created back in 2017 it’s north uh Northwest of Palm Springs out in the desert it’s
157,000 acres and I had the Good Fortune to visit there a couple of years ago um just after the area was cordoned off or created we’ll call it um it’s so new they’re still establishing the entry points but um I visited there with Shri botones and they had actually discovered
Um 27 New varieties or species uh selections of plants from the genuses so uh and they all um discovered these terrific um Petra Cliffs and Hier Cliffs that were painted in the caves by the Native Americans from years and years ago if you go there the time of year
Which is after we’ve had the rains the flower displays are absolutely eye watering you know I must confess I’m I’m fairly good with plants but you know on a lot of these plants I have to carry a book with me and then I still don’t know what I’m looking at the flower displays
Are spec spectacular this is a a unique variety of plant called a a desert mow or spiralia um but this is one of the biggest I ever seen the plant was about five to six feet high and 12 feet across and of course the flower description speaks for itself what was unique about
This picture and I didn’t see it until I actually put it up on a screen was in the background you’ll notice those beautiful blue flowers those are desert delphinums I never knew we had such a creature and uh so again lots of new plants to learn this year we had a
Marvelous display of wild flowers in California to really get a great flower display the needs to get into the ground about 16 to 18 in and that’s when we have a great flower display these are California poppies and then California blue bells as well as you travel North uh you get into
Higher Ground 1,500 ft you get into the Joshua National Tree Park which is on the way to Las Vegas if you if you’ve never been to Las Vegas um make sure your credit card is fully loaded did you have to go there just once it’s kind of
Fun but on the way there on the drive on the 15 freeway you’ll pass through joshu national tree and the plant on the left hand side is probably about 200 years old and it is spiritually moving there is no other way to describe it to walk through these magnificent statues of
These plants um from from seedlings that naturally occur uh in the ground that managed to germinate in about one in about 200 plants actually manages to thrive so of course the um the main enemy of these great plants is fire and also the weather change that we are
Experiencing all over the world and then you get up into the high sieras you know you’re getting up into sort of into the High Country fabulous displays of wild flowers this is a native perennial called Indian paintbrush this one is actually in production and it’s called Applegates paintbrush just fabulous so
It’s really key to talk about people and we we work with a whole group of people I thought it might be fun to you to meet my wife affectionally known as sweetie pie the only woman I’ve ever been in love with that comes home smelling of
Cordite but on a more serious note these are two icons in uh our our plants in the southwest the top left hand picture of is a guy called Randy Baldwin Randy has a super Nursery called San Marcus grow in Santa Barbara and unfortunately San Marcus grow is in uh its final
Couple of years so make sure you visit with him when you come over a great a very engaging man very free of his time very free of his knowledge just a wonderful person and a little known man on the right hand side is probably one of the icons of plant Discovery and
Plant breeding of indigenous plants out here Mr Ron gas Ron was the owner of a company called Mountain estate’s Wholesale Nursery the uh he he he has bought to Market many many plants when he originally started doing plant exploration he and a friend uh would actually take a motorbike and side car
And they’d just drive across the border down into Mexico and they used to look into the desert areas and find these communities of plants in swales um way off the Beaten Track that had interbred with each other and they would tie cotton on the flowers and then they
Would go back in the Autumn or the late summer to collect the seeds they knew where the cotton was you know they knew where they get their plants from he is he is well known for uh the Hella breeding program or red flowering uh yaka program now I don’t know if you’re
Growing these plants in down around the Mediterranean but personally I think they would do extremely well and uh somehow have to figure out how to get you some seed over to try them so has Bellas get tall they get large they get very clumpy they can be quite you know
Slightly ungainly so a plant that’s for or five years old you know In Bloom might be five to six feet high and take an area of four to five feet in in the garden so what Ron has done he’s bred sort of slightly smaller plants this is pink parade very upright variety
Fabulous pink flower very long season of Bloom most of his plants are seedless so they have a very long blooming period and what’s absolutely unique about pink parade is that most of the uh stalks of hasp parellas they don’t have branches pink parade has branches so you’ve got
Quadruple the flowers on the plants this is py py was one of the traps that worked for him the the farm where they bred these plants is down on on the border of Mexico and Arizona so very harsh very dry very L very low nutrient ground which is exactly what the Hellas
Grow this is uh one this is a a this is a color breakthrough uh called desert dusk um this is the only purple flowering husp Barella on the market today smaller only about 3 feet high very fine foliage uh long Bloom the flowers never fully open so they hold on
The stem for a long time you really have to go in once a year and prune the flower stalks off um ana yes sorry um can you just tell what does pp 28910 does it that’s thank you so much so a lot of the plants that um are created are
Patented and so uh the pp means plant patent and there’s there’s a lot of schools of thought there’s people who disagree with this I understand that but there are people that agree with it because um the plant patent L for about 20 years so anything with a PP on it
Creates a royalty stream that goes back to the breeder um or or the company it’s and when you have a name desert dusk with a registered mark on it then a company can actually own the name of the plant and they can license other people to produce these plants
Or use the name but then there’s a monetary stream that um that surrounds that intellectual property is uh is a bit it’s a big thing in America it’s a big thing all over the world in Plants now and then the last hasp Barella which I had to mention is one called Sandia
Glow and this is the reddest of all the hasp barelas and this flower has a wax coating on it uh the flower the plant will start blooming in the late summer and will stop in the early spring so in the warmer climates you can have this uh
Right the way through the cooler Seasons the hardiness Zone on this is and I’m going to do this in Fahrenheit because I know you traps are in um in centigrade I think the hardness Zone on this is probably about sort of 15 to 20 below Fahrenheit so extremely Hardy and also
Will live quite happily in 116 120 Dee weather so the scope of their survivability is fantastic Jim fsam had to mention Jim the Mediterranean Garden society when we had our DU over here couple of three years ago Jim was kind enough to host us at the Huntington
Library uh he retired a year or so ago but um wanders back in uh on a rainy or a sunny day so we still get to see him from time to time a unique guy Dan inle I had to mention Dan I I was I had the Good Fortune to work under Dan’s
Leadership on plant exploration in uh when he was working for the old company I worked for and he was exploring in um Taiwan Japan China Tibet Mongolia Northern India South Africa South America he’s actually in South America right now one of the most humble men I’ve ever met and
He he he’s famous there’s no other way to describe it and um he is again giving very humble very giving of his time his expertise so there’s really been some great opportunity to work with him here’s a typical of example this is a picture taken in Northern Mayanmar and
The Chinese border is where the mountains are this is typical of the type of forest that he’s looking for plants in exploring in and uh he has uh um trekers or tribes who would guide him through the area it’s only recently that um plant exploration has been allowed in
Northern myammar it’s run by the Jun run by the military and the and the local tribesmen have been Waring with the Juna for years in years and I think the history book reflects that the tribesmen have been doing pretty well against the military you know they use things like
Poisoned Aras and stuff like that but anyway Dan has been doing quite a bit of plant exploration back there Denny wner again is an icon in trees and Denny on the right and his plantsman Lane on the left uh he has been working extensively with Red Buds or cus um
There are are many different varieties he’s been working in and one of uh he’s got several Creations on the market one of the most impressive is a cus called uh Melo and he crossed forest pansy which has red leaves beautiful pink flowers in the early spring C is for us
Normally an understory tree or edge of Woodland and uh they get to be about 18 feet high 20 feet across they’re great for a smaller medium-sized Garden he crossed forish panszi with a Texas red bud called Texan ensus and Texan ensus is bone Hardy I’ve seen plants that
Thrive in full sun which is highly unusual so the leaves are heavily textured very drought tolerant so this is going to put these whole collection of Red Buds into a new um sphere the plant I had to mention which is antique there’s no other way to describe it and uh originates from Judea
Actually originates from Southern Israel is called Bodin and this plant was given the award of garden Merit by The Royal Horticultural Society many many years ago and we’re just starting to produce it and actually all our all the all the budding and grafting is done for us in
Southern Israel by a Super Chat called Omar husher what is unique about this particular variety is it’s a little more ungainly um you can see by the picture on the right hand side you know it’s kind of it spreads doesn’t have that really fine Branch structure like a lot
Of the cus do but is’s a blooming machine in the early spring as the plant reaches maturity you can’t see the branches for the flowers it’s spectacular and it’s a zone hardier so normally um for us it’s a USDA zone 7 right which is probably about sort of 15
15 Fahrenheit so this plant’s a zone six so this is going to go below freezing so we’re very excited for that because it’s going to increase the range Pete Alor the famous Dutch designer is finally beginning to make make his Mark in America and he’s going to change how we
Look at our Landscapes he and N Kingsbury some other people uh are on this um new perennial look uh which is really driving how we change some of our Landscapes the uh he’s done some famous gardens in America this is the Larry Garden which is in Chicago the Larry
Garden uh is a is a um a large um a large facility but Pete’s Garden which is 7 Acres this is the largest rooftop garden in the world and it sits on top of a parking garage which is underground and uh people who live in the apartments or the work in the office
Buildings you know they will fre frequent this garden and you can see the great color change through the season Pete is known for 365 day round the year Gardens so regardless of when you go in there spring summer autumn winter something is going on in
The garden only once a year do they go in and prune the gardens that’s in the early spring so any seeds that’s have fallen on the ground they’ll prune they’ll mulch these seeds are allowed to germinate so the garden is naturally regenerating the Highline which is one
Of the more famous gardens in America it’s uh there’s a there’s a presentation just behind this one it it was an above ground railroad trap and um it actually was going to be torn down and they decided to make it into a public space Pete alof fortunately was asked to do
The plant mix um they have something like I don’t know one or two million people a year that visit this Garden if you’re in New York this is the place to go so again whether you’re spring summer autum then there’s something going on there and the other great thing is the
Amount of pollinators that have been attracted Ed to this Garden is absolutely fantastic a must have on your book in your book library is a by Pete and no Kingsbury called planting you know even if you don’t even if you don’t read The Narrative the pictures are
Absolutely fantastic so um we we thought it would be fun to talk about Trends so uh the Oasis garden um this is becoming a a big Trend uh in the southwestern region and so cly a lot of areas because the gardens are becoming much smaller land values are just growing through the
Roof so this actually the pictures in front of you are one of the naturally occurring Oasis which are south of Palm Springs back in the mountain you know again if you’re out this would be a great place to visit it’s a great hike you can sit by these Waters um and you
Know if you’re really lucky you’ll get to see a big horn sheep a big horn sheep come down there for a drink in the really hot weather so uh the water situation in the Southwest is grim uh this is Lake Meade which supplies Las Vegas Las Vegas still continues to be
One of the fastest growing cities in the United States of America and believe it or not for a couple of years was the number one destination worldwide more people were going to Las Vegas than any other Lake me is now a shadow of its former self and you can see by the
Picture on the left hand side sort of the bathtub line if I’ll use that terrible expression that you can see the bathtub line where the water used to be now in the dams they’re actually uh drilling holes lower in the dams to extract the water to drive the turbines
That provide electricity for Las Vegas so um it’s reckoned it would take something like 20 or 30 years for this uh for this Lake to fill up to its natural level or the naturally occuring level with not with regular rainfall every year so so the JW’s on this if
Water in Las Vegas is unrecyclable then uh you you are not allowed to plant plants so this is a this is what’s happening on the freeways the freeways used to be full of plants for people to enjoy trees shrubs whatever it might be and now it’s just
Gravel so of course these people who design all these freeways and the gravel it’s raising the ground temperatures so no one thinks about that by 2026 all the grass has to be moved unless it’s um a playing field or a park or something like that so you are no
Longer allowed to have grass in your garden or your private space bottom right hand picture of course what’s becoming very popular is um fake grass or it’s really looks it’s beautiful but I tell you it gets so hot and it’s very hard to keep cool so the people that
Inall this fake grass say well we can put a sprinkler system in there for you as well but you’re not allowed to do that um and I think we’re going to see the same thing happen in Southern California as well so what’s happening is with this Oasis garden the gardens
Are going to be brought much closer to the house um they’re going to be smaller areas there’s going to be intensive gardening and anything that’s outside a certain circumference is just going to be bare dirt so you know trees are going to become more important um longer blooming plants will become more
Important and and I guess the other great thing is this can be become the third room or the fourth room whatever it might be water will be key uh water is so important for Birds Wildlife pollinators so every Garden has to have the water you have to figure out how you can do
That uh the University California Davis has got a unique program in the trialing and evaluation of plants which we are we are I’m part of an Advisory Group that works with with this we’re trying to broaden this um into the cooler regions the colder States of America and into
Arizona New Mexico and West Texas here’s a typical trial the trials normally last between two and three years plants are plants are there’s a hole that’s dug the plant is put in the hole there’s no soil no organic soil added just the natural soil is put back into the hole 3 in of
Organic mulch is added and then the plants go on a on a on a low medium or high water schedule and the water is strictly monitored they receive about three waterings a year depending on high medium and water uh sorry high medium and uh low they receive three cycles of
Water a year their growth is monitored the uh the measurements of the plants the care and attention of the plants is monitored by the Master Gardeners which are under the umbrella of the University so what we’re finding in some of these trials is absolutely fantastic um we’re
Really learning how little water some of these plants uh do need and other plants that we thought would never survive in this climate and an example in the bottom right hand picture is a grammar grph a baluya called blond ambition blond ambition is taken the market by storm the plant was originally
Discovered at 75 500 ft outside Santa Fe New Mexico on a place called r Mesa is absolutely thriving in Southern California we’re even more surprised that the plant sets its beautiful seeds um and it’s non-invasive um it doesn’t the seeds don’t germinate once they hit the ground
So um normally you know up in Santa Fe you’re you’re probably going to get 6 to 700 chilling hours a year which is when you’re down in the for 40s down in Southern California Northern California we only get maybe 100 or 150 trilling hours a year and the plant is thriving
So we’re learning a lot containers remain extremely popular and we’re seeing uh we’re seeing a complete change we’re seeing the annualization of perennials used to be in containers that was prunas maragold you know annals these sorts of plants now we’re seeing a lot of perennials whether they’re Hardy perennials or Tender perennials the
Plant that we’re looking at is called it’s the Salvia called armastad armastad is a big Salvia four to five feet high more on the tropical side uh but the plant uh well was discovered probably about 10 15 years ago performs beautifully in a container in the warmer
Climates will Bloom year round and of course um I’ve got some friends who I tried to get into container gardening because they won’t they won’t spend the time with a bigger Garden so I bought them a container plants everything and of course once their dog had slept in it
That was it no plants in the container somehow I’m going to get that container back in my own garden at the Denver Botanical Garden which has a terrific collaboration between uh the State University Colorado University and the garden we’re going to talk about their plant program their container plantings in
The uh Garden itself are fantastic what they’ve done is they’ve taken plants from the various regions of Colorado and put these into the containers each plant you see has a sign so you can read what’s in there and of course if you have a broken container use those in the
Garden put them somewhere you can put a plant inside and then the plant will grow out towards the sunlight it’s just fantastic the choice the selection there is something for everyone succulents have become very popular they became very trendy six or seven years ago and have really swept into a
Cultural shift they’re available all over America in the garden centers and for those people that have just a patio or a porch really don’t have a garden whatsoever the textures and the colors and the colors of containers you can use are fantastic these are these are the sorts of plants that get people
Interested Sky gardening if I can use that term is a is a big Trend in America people have very small gardens they’re coming up with these really cool ideas of how to use that space this is a gavi Americana the plants will probably live quite happily in these containers three
Maybe four years um it’s a great choice for the container however the plants will end up getting six feet high and about 12 feet across they’re an absolute monster so I guess he’s going to have to give them to neighbors who’ve got more land and then uh the the absolute raging
Trend is metal containers if you’ve got a house that’s a little bit more on the Contemporary style the modernistic type style these are terrific animal troughs come in all sorts of shapes and sizes they’re very easy you can change the crops out and if you’re plagued with
Gophers then um which we are at home where I live we we have we have a very healthy population of gophers right uh and if you have a healthy population of gophers in the in the Hills where live it means that you also have a very healthy population of rattlesnakes
Because a goer is the favorite food of the rattlesnake gardening in containers with more fruit this is the my lemon my lemon is probably the number one Citrus Citrus have become this uh so popular All Over America regardless of whether you’re living in the cold country or the warm
Country course the warmer you are you can use them in ground people have figured out how to overwinter them in a garage they’ve have figured out how to overwinter them uh in a sun room this is a great variety called Mya lemon which was discovered back in the 30s no one
Really knows what the cross is but I think it’s a cross between a lemon and a tangerine the original plant was found in Bakersfield California plants will fruit every second year reliably the the smooth they’re very smooth as you can see and they probably have about 25% more juice
Than any other Citrus that’s available on the market today so um I make lots of lemonade you can literally here I am in the kitchen uh you can literally cut the plant uh cut the fruit in half squeeze it into a container add your iced water
And a way you go no need to add sweetener or sugar or anything like that Tropicals container plants again are sweeping Across America I thought it might be fun just to show you a couple of varieties uh the Tradewind series which is by far the most popular all the
Breeding is done in Southern California and I have no doubt this program is found in Europe as well it’s so popular these are smaller hibiscus uh larger flowers clusters of flowers they actually come in bouquet the other great thing about the breeding program is the petals are self-supporting it used to be
With the tropical hibiscus that there was a gap between the petal and in a day they just that’ falter but the plow for the last two or three days so they’re becoming very popular people we use them in ground in the warmer regions and then once you get into the colder regions
They use them as annuals they’re really not worth trying to Winter over and then Andel and I were talking about mandelas and I I wanted to show you one brand new variety um this I I I would think this is available in Europe because it was bred in Japan this is called Sunbeam
This plant you’re looking at is 3 years old old I was fortunate G enough to get one of the first plants that came into America the plant is in a 12in container I have never pruned it so you’re probably about 8 to n Ines high and
About two to 2 and a half feet across and where I am I’ll have flowers on the plant um 10 months out of the year it’s an absolute Delight I put it on a an upturn uh container so it can Cascade down and looks absolutely fantastic Monty Dawn I tell you I’m happily
Married but if I have a male Hearts robob it’s Monty Dawn this guy is the cats meow and I’m sure all of you at some point have have followed him if you don’t I’d really encourage it to you Monty Don talks about the history of gardens he talks about years and years
Ago how Gardens were the signs of great wealth you know if you were someone with lots of money uh you had a big garden and it wasn’t five acres it was like um anywhere from like 25 to 100 to 200 Acres water was key in all these Gardens
So um the Bishops the popes the Aristocrat aristocrats the Kings and the Queens had these fantastic Gardens now Everything Has Changed now in in the last 10 to 15 years plants have become extraordinarily popular they really have more people interested in gardening than ever before Garden is absolutely on the
Precipice of opportunity in parts of the U areas in America you see these fabulous murials that people have uh planted on the on the sides of old buildings or blighted areas it’s just incredible I thought here’s just one example of a murial in in downtown
Chicago this a the tree is real but of course the painting is fantastic in Secret locations whether in Los Angeles San Francisco Portland the Oregon New York Boston Atlanta on Saturday mornings and sometimes all day groups of youngsters will gather in warehouses where these massive plant auctions occur you grab a paper plate
You’re given a number and so you bid on these plants as they come up for auction indoor plants have become extraordinarily valuable here’s a filad dendron a variegated variety just as one example if you go on the internet where a lot of the auctions happen U this is a
6in plant that you’re looking at and the bidding starts at $1,100 uh and it’s all about the variegation on the plant this is this is what drives the value recently one of these plants was sold for $6,000 $400 who would ever have thought that type of money so with this we’re seeing
This new breed of plants people getting people interested in Plants an icon uh in in insects and the insect world and bringing nature into your garden is Doug talmy we had the Good Fortune to have Doug present for us two years ago at one of our events we had about 600 people
Online who came to listen to him Doug is a he’s an educator he is an author um what he talks about is bringing these pollinators into your garden and the type of plants that you can use um lots of different whether it’s honeybees butterflies talks about the swallow Tales which is
In the top left hand picture and then the monik butterfly on the right hand side he is so Keen here starting a homegrown National Park um process we have a series of national parks all across America you might have heard of yuse a very well-known National Park in Northern California what Doug talami
Wants to create is a network of gardens Across America each Garden has to reach a certain criteria and then turn this into a national park lots of the plants he talks about are specious plants they’re not naturally bred they’re not created these are naturally occurring
This is a a Tacoma which is a plant in the southwest that’s the common name as well Tacoma stands very Fifer it’ll Bloom probably for about nine months out of the year and is probably one of the best pollinators you can have in your garden um this last year I identified
Four different varieties of Bumblebee on the Tacoma I had and then we had numerous different species of honey bees absolutely magnet I used to draw the car up right beside this plant and then I used to roll the window down and I’d take pictures of all these insects and
They uh we used have we’d have some hermit bees and hermit bees they’re the size of the end of your thumb and the hermit bees would fly that fly into the car and they come and check you out they do they they’ll they’ll hover like three
Or four inches in front of you and they fly around your face and they check you out and then they just go back to the bush again our Gardens have got to become more sustainable this is a my sister lives in Malta this typical malse Garden where everything just grows over itself
But everything thrives everything has the same water needs has the same soil needs you might fertilize it once a year the soil is so poor out there and of course everyone is growing fruit the gardens that we create whether we create them in California or Upstate New York
We need to be planting plants that sustain what you’re looking at now is a typical Southwestern planting in the foreground is the boa Blonde Ambition the original plant the plant the taller plant with the beautiful plumes is a deer grass or called murgia and then the flowering plant is agust or aachi
Depending on where you’re from numerous different varieties lots of different colors it’s an American Native in some of the region so you know we we have a a long way to go and so books you I must confess um I I didn’t put my picture in
Of the uh of magazines but I can run through them quickly we all need to have a library and if you don’t have a library please start so here are a few of some of the suggestions this is called pretty tough plants and it’s written uh the the authors uh is
The Denver Botanical Garden the chances are you’re only going to be able to find this online and if you buy it keep it uh and then will it to somebody it’s a unique plant the plant descriptions the photographs and the hand drawings are spectacular and so many of these plants
Although they’re grown um up in the uh in Colorado at a Mile High they work beautifully in the lower warmer regions De le Baldwin the self-professed um queen of succulents Deborah borwin has written three or four books on succulents and succulent design and again a great read supported by terrific
Narrative our own Nan Stearman from Southern California who is a member of our society uh has written numerous books this is this is one of her latest and again I think this is a musthave hot color Dry garden uh n traveled from California all the way through to West
Texas and up into New Mexico Colorado Utah taking pictures of gardens very much on the dry side but showing fantastic displays of color the first half of the book is photography supported by some narrative the second half of the book is an encyclopedia many of the plants that she
Mentions in the first half or has taken pictures of she has a picture of them and then she goes into great detail of each plant how it performs and how to use it in the garden trees and shrubs for the Southwest by Mary arish Mary arish one of the great plants women of
The Southwest um designed many fabulous Gardens and uh also wrote two or three books so lots of uh good reading there and then the most moving book I think I’ve ever read in the last few years I’ve had the great opportunity to get involved in Horticultural therapy Horticultural therapy was quite trendy
Right um it was thought it was kind of a thing to do Horticultural therapy is now a cultural shift in the United States of America and many many areas of the world Horticultural therapy owes its roots to the Europeans that’s where the whole idea of using plants started and using
Them in Wellness programs you’ll find Gardens in hospitals senior centers wellness centers doctors doctor’s offices outside whatever it might be this particular book goes through various Gardens in the United States of America whether they are in prisons whether they are in blighted areas of Chicago or Minneapolis wherever it might be
And it is one of the most emotional reads that I’ve ever done it’s a it’s a terrific book so that’s it thank you for joining me this gives you a glimpse of what we’re doing in America and I I do thank you Angela for inviting me to present
It’s it’s probably the highest spot of my year thank you slight and it’s a very very great pleasure to have listened to you I um think that there were several um questions on the chat and I would like to ask either Maggie or Ivonne if you could read those out because I think
That those were whipping past us um um if you’d like to stop sharing your screen now thank you Nicholas okay and we’ll go back into the sort of gallery View there we go there we go so so uh is uh has any is either Maggie or Ivon there Maggie I’m here could you do a favor and read them out there was some questions coming up there was quite a few wasn’t there um there was a bit of discussion about
Whether us Growers were allowed to send seed to the MGs seed exchange um and Chantel who is knows exactly all about this says no no seed coming from outside Europe can be imported in Europe without a phytosanitary certificate oh so that’s that tells us about uh how we can get seed from
America um and and Maggie if I may my apologies the phyto sanitaries really are they’re not difficult to obtain and so that’s a fairly easy process okay great so that would be good news for us yes but I’m so I’m sorry can I answer to this I answer to this yes absolutely uh
Yes uh as I am running the the Sid list Exchange in for MGS um I think for myself that uh it could be as I I am alone to do that to do that job and I think that it would be too much complicated for me to do that to
Ask uh I can I can try I could try but um French uh rules are very complicated and they are not very easy to deal with because the French French um institutions uh like very much papers they they do a lot of papers there so
It’s it’s always a lot of fuss for for for for doing this you understand what I mean perhaps I can I can try to ask to yeah I yeah I just so um Shantel do you ever get uh seeds from any one of our members in
America do you receive them I should not tell that okay no the answer is no I have I have my I have have my uh own uh I’m going very very often to us I mean every two years I go to us so I do things I do my
Things so we should possibly move on from that one then really quickly I’ll make a few inquiries with some pal how of mine and let’s see if we can find a bridge for this right okay okay uh the next question is about Oasis Gardens that you were describing to us
Um and how they coordinate with fire restrictive plantings ah yeah well um there are no hard and fast rules and regulations providing uh fire restrictions uh the fire departments have approved lists of of plants and the in somewhere like Las Vegas my thought is there are no there
Are no restrictions whatsoever in what you have around your house the fire restrictions are much more Draconian in California so for instance where I live then uh the local fire department inspects our properties um anywhere from one to three times a year and they will give you a written warning as to what
They want you to do with your property and if you fail to do that then you’re fined and a local contractor comes in and will clear your ground wow so they they they also have Maps you know there are various um or diagrams you can buy about plantings to put around your house
And suggesting so um in in California is that that’s where they really do a lot of work with that can I add to that yeah Nan is got a hand up yeah so I live live about I don’t know an hour south of Nicholas maybe something like that here
In California and I’m in addition to writing and whatever I also design Gardens and one of the things that’s happening is that the designers are being told that we will no longer be able to design plants for um an envelope around the house that starts right at the structure and goes out five
Feet I’m not very happy about this but um so we’ve we’ve got you know kind of what Nicholas is describing an envelope of in of planting that will be limited to but the first five feet from the house out can’t be plants so the the planting space is kind of being squeezed
From both sides um it’ll be interesting to watch and see what happens okay um the next question is about what’s desirable about the annualization of perennials which I think was from Nan yes on a on a on a personal basis I I would never plant another another annual um
They’re just too fooo for me I can’t find a better word and the amount of perennials which are just magnificent you know one they’re going to come back uh year after year after year many of the perennials are very long liveed they um you know that I think they’re larger
They’re more Fifer they add more uh diversity to the Garden they they add more diversity to the containers um you know many of the perennials you can harvest the blooms you can harvest the stems you can bring them indoors um you know to use for your Cut Flower Arrangements you’ve got uh perennials
That bloom uh all the seasons through the year so I think the diversity is fantastic annual sales depending on on who you’re talking to that there really is a shift away from annuals in in many parts of America that that’s a long- winded answer to the um there’s there’s a lot of uh
Comments thanking you very much for the really interesting presentation Nicholas and um than you a little bit of information for people um Emma banister just downloaded pretty tough plants on Kindle unlimited by Amazon it’s included apparently in the Kindle unlimited fee and it’s great so anybody with Kindle
Unlimited There’s an opportunity to look at that one um I think that’s all the questions that are on the chat Angela well done Maggie thanks very much so now if anyone would have would like to speak to you know ask a a Live question um to Nicholas uh I think I had
Some oh yes when you can I can I just ask ask one myself please so so you’re talking about the farm in Oregon and you were saying that the the water is it’s a it’s a self-contained ecosystem it goes yes it mustn’t run off is that because
Of yeah yeah so so there’s a nurseries uh there are a number of states in America that require growing operations to have a closed water system and that’s to say um it’s it’s it’s the right thing to do to contain your water to save your water uh
Nurseries do use some chemicals and they also do use fertilizers so it’s a way of mitigating those chemicals and fertilizers so during the recycling process you can identify as the water is put onto the crops and then it goes into the recycling system into the underground
Canal as the water goes back into the reservoirs the water is monitored and you can identify the level of chemicals and you can identify the levels of fertilizer in there as well so um yep so you can that’s where you either add or you subtract and then you can
Also uh you also add a certain amount of fresh water in there um Florida the state of Florida and and I I think this is um this is going to become a major Topic at some point I think some of you will have probably heard about the
Terrible die off of the reefs around Florida um you know one one of the reasons is the water temperature this year believe it or not we had water temperature of 100° around the Floridian Coast so the the reefs can’t they can’t adjust to that but they can’t
Adjust to the amount of fertilizer that is washing off the farms and off the Gulf courses and off the nurseries into the water so the algae is absolutely thriving on all the nitrogen that’s in the water so we we need to take this in check and not not to not to make this
Political but it’s very important that the Growers take this in hand themselves there are certain things that people need to do in order to do the right thing um I I work with a group in California uh which pertains to invasive plants where we have a huge problem with
Invasive plants in America all over so one of the things that uh we do in this group is to work on the voluntary removal of invasive plants from Nest reproduction and over the last 10 years or so it’s been a it really has been a very successful program and we’ve got
Some you know like Randy Baldwin so who I mentioned Randy is part of this group and you know you you’ve got good support for things like this thank you I just had another question too about the Palms in Florida yeah you’re not uh subject to any of the pest that
We are seeing in Europe we yes we so um Angela this is a terrific question I um I can do more research on this I am not I’m not up on my Palms but in California and also in Florida we we are having um Na you know Nan might be able
To answer this question better than I there are there are numerous issues and pestilence with palms and the Nan can you take this question about pestilence on Palms yeah I can tell you what we’re finding here is a South American Palm Weevil which is a weevil that’s about an inch
And a half long maybe almost two inches is very nasty is started on all the Canary Island Palms which are fantastic giant beautiful Palms you know widely represented out throughout California um and they what happens is you you see one of these giant palms and from the top it
All flops down it looks like a wet dog and what happens is the weevils get into the the um the top of the Palms the growing stem and they lay their eggs when the eggs hatch out the grubs eat that Marist stem and that destroys the growing part of the palm and eventually
It just makes a big mess the pumps die and you don’t notice it until it’s too late I mean literally you cannot see it until it’s too late and we I’m in San Diego area basically it’s just it’s just one after the next after the next after
The next I mean we’re not going to have Canary Island Palms here and we are hearing reports of them um also infecting other Palms not widely um seems to me bisaria nobilis I’ve heard and um dipis diari which is the triangle Palm but I haven’t heard any official
Word about that just people saying oh yes I think it’s happened here I think it’s up in there but the Canary Island Palms which are a major Palm is a huge issue and I think Nicholas isn’t it there a huge concern about getting to the date palms in the desert oh really I
You know again this is hearsay but it wouldn’t surprise me one bit if that were to happen I have not heard I’ve not heard about the the um South American Palm Weevil in affecting our native we only have one native Palm even though California is filled with Palms there’s
Only one Palm native to California it’s native to the desert areas is called uh it’s Washington which Washington is it Nicholas filif fif thank you because the other one is Robusta which is an invasive from Mexico so washingtonia fifra is our native pmit only native to Desert oases nowhere else
In the state but um it’d be great if it got to the Washingtonian um Rob besta because those are just a nuisance but oh well okay every in every cloud there’s a silver lining okay so I mean uh I mean over here I we’ve obviously seen Devastation um and I’m I’m not up
On because of course you can’t tell what’s going on until it is too late um but there are preventative um treatments uh not not really not really no there are people who are spending a whole lot of money on trying to keep their um Canary Island
Palms and uh nothing the the jury is out as to whether it’s working or just delaying the inevitable yeah we were having people drench their drench from the top and then big syringes and you know I I don’t know if anyone in Europe wants to speak about this I’m not an
Expert but it is quite devastating to to witness if you’re living on a coast in a coastal area and in terms of International Plant exchanging and plant cooperation you know obviously some of some of us believe that some of these new pests that we’re having to coexist with are
Due to the fact that there is such traffic um uh perhaps not of plants themselves but of other um living organisms that are causing these new arrivals um is there massive you know what’s the sort of legislation uh at a global level what is anybody doing anything to well there is
That there’s a there’s a lot of collaboration between the various countries and the Agricultural and the Horticultural institutions whether it’s you know private or governmental and where so many we’ve we have a um we have a boore over here called Emerald ashore um and emerald ashore originated
Uh I believe in China I think and uh the way Emerald ashor got into the United States was in packing material and I believe it was in Pennsylvania so someone shipped in a whole bunch of I don’t know airplane parts or car parts or something and the packing
That was used was Ash chips right to cushion everything and in there was the emerald ash bore and emerald ash bore has pretty much wiped out um all the ash trees on the east coast in the Midwest and is now been found in Oregon so it will come down into California and we
Will lose many of our ash trees so there’s a lot of pestilence and disease that piggybacks on you know on people suitcases on their shoes you know clothes whatever it might be and the other thing is the um illegal importation of plants we have uh we have a disease called Citrus
Greening and the Citrus Greening was uh bought into Florida and has actually decimated about 50% of the Citrus in Industry there and we actually have the CID that carries the disease now in in California so U you know if the CID is ever found then there’s a quarantine
That is quickly put up around those areas and it’s uh potentially it could wipe out our Citrus crop here but the way that the particular how the the disease was B into the country the how they found out was unbelievable so um Citrus Greening was discovered in Florida and the team
Of experts from Washington went down to Florida and one of them one of these chaps I knew so they were working in the various Citrus Groves etc etc and they were out to dinner one night in a uh in a in an Asian restaurant and they fell into
Conversation with the owner of the restaurant and he asked what they’re doing there and he told them and he he said oh he said I have a lemon tree out back that’s looking really poorly have a look at it so they looked at this lemon
Tree and sure enough it was it was um had uh is it Wong Wong dong is the right word now um oh shoot if you hadn’t said that I would tell you I think it’s long hlb okay there you go yeah H Hong I can’t remember now Daren you said that
Nicholas I would I would have been able to right away something like that so anyway so they go back and they look at this Bing I think it is I think it’s Wang long Bing if that helps so I’m I’m a little off with Wong dong then okay so I’ll
Work I I’ll work on that sorry so anyway they go back and they look at this guy citrus tree and it was it was had Citrus Greening and they asked where he got the uh the original budding wood from he got the original budding wood from Vietnam
Had it shipped over illegally and that’s how citrus Greening got into the United States of America that was the original tree so there’s a there’s a a lot of illegal importation of plants and and also animals as well it’s uh yeah it’s a bad it’s a bad do
Okay well let’s not end on a dark note no let’s end on a big thank you to Nicholas um I think that was a fascinating presentation it’s a different point of view and it’s very very welcome because of that thank you thank you I have 10 out of 12 speakers lined up for
Next year so I’ll be publishing that list for you um and I hope that we will continue to see each other once uh once a month um next year and thank you all for supporting um you know the talks I I think it’s it it’s great it’s different to our Journal
Um and um I think it’s been a good initiative and thanks to one good thing to come out of Co perhaps yes Nan I just wanted to thank you this is one of the best series of webinars of any that I have participated in since before covid
The talks you the people you found to present and the talks that you have uh curated have been stellar in every way and I’m just very very thankful because you’ve given me exposure to people and things happening around the world that I otherwise wouldn’t know about but I
Think about them now it’s like they’re in my designs they’re in my talks they’re in my presentations they’re in the way I advise people and it it it really makes a difference I I don’t know that you realize how much of a difference you’re making and I really
Want to thank you for that well that’s very much appreciated really glad to hear it I’m very very glad to hear it okay so thank you Nan thanks for uh for that um so okay so happy holidays and um happy New Year and we’ll see you on uh January
The 10th around that the second Wednesday of January um and first up is Michael mcy from Australia so there’ll be a slightly different time and I can’t remember for the life of me it’s very there was an intense planning program to see how we could get three continents to talk at the same
Time I think we might lose we might have to lose some Americans I’m sorry I think it might be impossible for you unless you’re very very keen um but since they don’t the Australians don’t get to hear our regular presentations I think it’s a slight um it it just it just doesn’t
Work very easily however they’re all obviously on YouTube as you all know um so again Nicholas thank you that was marvelous thank you very much and for saving the day and thanks to you all cheers and cheers see you soon okay take care bye bye