This isn’t your ordinary everyday butterfly bush. Buddleia Grand Cascade from Walters Gardens has enormous 12- to 14-in. long and 4-in. thick panicles. They’re absolutely huge and beautiful. The light lavender purple blooms cascade downward completely covering the 5- to 6-ft. tall bushes in the late summer, giving an appealing weeping appearance. Grand Cascade bred by Hans Hansen (both shown above) is a great Zone 5 plant for attracting pollinators and is an awesome landscape specimen. 

Speaking of Hans Hansen, I thought I’d try a new segment in the newsletter where I feature some of the breeders behind the plants we all grow and love (and love to grow), and you guessed it, Hans is my proverbial guinea pig, so to speak.

Hans has spent most of his career working with baptisia, lily, hosta and peony, but has also worked extensively with over 70 perennial genera. He’s discovered or stabilized numerous sports, as well as worked with hybridization of many perennials. His introductions to date are impressive and far too numerous to list here. However, I can’t leave you hanging, so here are a few of his most recognizable intros thus far.

Of course, you’re already aware of the Buddleia Grand Cascade featured above, but he's also introduced the cultivars in the Humdinger, Cascade and Monarch series of butterfly bushes. Perhaps you’ve heard of the colorful and very reliable Decadence series of baptisia he bred.

You may not have known that Hans has introduced over 60 hosta cultivars, including Fire and Ice, and Touch of Class. Oh my, the list goes on: Achillea Sassy Summer series; Dianthus Fruit Punch and Pretty Poppers series; Monarda Leading Lady and Sugar Buzz series; and Phlox Opening Act series.

And this is just the tip of the iceberg—Hans has also introduced various cultivars of agastache, clematis, digiplexis, helleborus, heuchera, heucherella, hibiscus, lagerstroemia, mangave, nepeta, salvia, sedum and veronica. I think you get the picture ... he’s pretty talented and accomplished to say the least. 

Hans Hansen in a field of his hybrid Hibiscus Berry Awesome.

Now that you know what Hans Hansen has accomplished, I asked him a few questions about his journey and thought I’d share that conversation with you.

Thanks so much for taking the time to answer these questions, Hans! I really appreciate what you do and look forward to seeing the fruits of your labor in the years ahead.

Did you like the inaugural "Meet the Breeder" feature? Would you like to see more breeders featured in future newsletters? If so, please let me know. I’d also be interested in hearing if there are any specific breeders you’d like to learn more about. Email your comments and requests to ppilon@ballpublishing.com.
 

Ever find yourself longing for a more colorful sedge. Well, the wait is over. Allow me to introduce Carex scaposa, a new sedge from Hoffman Nursery. With its cherry blossom pink spikes, this bright and showy sedge sets itself apart from the others. This delightful carex has arching deep green blades measuring 1.25-in. wide that gradually narrow towards the tips. The flowers are borne on sturdy scapes (to which the botanical name scaposa refers) in the early spring and again in the early fall. It’s hardy to Zone 6.

The introduction of this shade-tolerant (it actually prefers light shade), colorful sedge to the U.S. is due to the efforts of the U.S. Arboretum Director Dr. Richard Olsen who acquired it from the Kunming Botanical Garden in China. In appreciation for his efforts, Hoffman Nursery will donate 10 cents from every plant sold to the U.S. National Arboretum to help them continue their exploration and conservation efforts. Sounds like a win-win proposition to me. Thank you, Dr. Olsen, for bringing us this great new carex.

Come join next week’s FREE perennial webinar, titled “Perennial Plants for Every Season – the Right Material at the Right Time.” Walters Gardens Trial Manager Jeremy Windemuller will share his expertise about how some perennials benefit from being grown during the summer months rather than planted in the late winter or spring. Come join Jeremy in this complimentary session to learn which items benefit from summer planting, their cultural requirements and how to overwinter them.

The webinar will be held at 1:00 p.m. Eastern/12:00 p.m. Central time on Wednesday, February, 14, 2018. Click here to learn more and to register for this FREE webinar.

Click on the image to see a larger and easier-to-read copy of the #PlantsDoThat poster.

The National Initiative for Consumer Horticulture (NICH) is asking all businesses and non-profits engaged in horticulture to participate in a brief, three-minute survey to help grow the industry.

Before I get to the survey, I thought I’d give you a brief synopsis of what NICH is and what they do. NICH is a broad coalition representing the entirety of consumer horticulture. Their mission is “Growing a healthy world through plants, gardens and landscapes” and their vision is to increase the percentage of U.S. households participating in Consumer Horticulture to 90% by 2025. One of their aims is to help our industry to get more market share, more profit and more access to federal, state, local and other resources to grow the industry. I know this sounds ambitious and there's more to NICH than I can cover here, so if you’d like to learn more, visit their website: www.consumerhort.org.

Now back to the survey ... The survey’s goal is to collect information to help NICH to better understand the benchmarks and tools being used by the industry to manage their businesses. This information will help them identify what numbers are important to our industry and to identify any gaps where more or different data is needed.

Participating in the NICH Economic Committee Survey will help them position consumer horticulture as the vital segment of agriculture and economy that it is. By understanding the economic data, NICH will identify ways to increase our industry’s access to federal, state and other sources of critical funding. These resources will shape our ability to grow and strengthen horticulture.

Click here to participate in the survey. To read more about NICH, fellow newsletter editor Debbie Hamrick wrote a guest column in the February issue of GrowerTalks.

NICH will be hosting a conference call in June 2018 to discuss the survey results.