The Peace Rose: cutting edge in the 50s, quaint now. Courtesy Wikipedia Commons
We are about to enter the hype-zone for “new” plants for the new year. That’ll get more and more buzzy leading up to peak planting season in May. Last November, the big debut was the world's first black petunia which Ball’s breeders worked on for four years. For 2012, Burpee’s unveiled an interesting suite of plants: the BOOST Collection, an assortment of vegetables bred to be more nutritionally dense, including the bright yellow ‘Solar Power Hybrid,’ tomato with three times the beta-carotene, and the ‘Sweet Heat Hybrid,’ pepper, with 65 percent more vitamin C. No doubt Burpee's had this collection in the works for a few years, in response to the popularity of vegetable gardening. (You can see all of their new-for-2012 plants here).
In the first chapter of Onward and Upward in the Garden, "A Romp in the Catalogs," former New Yorker Editor, Katherine White (wife of E.B.) notes humans have been messing with plant genes since before Mendel’s pink four o’clocks, breeding "roses that blossom all summer, day lilies that stay open longer, lettuce with less tendency to bold, corn that will not wilt, beans without strings." But as she flips through her 1956 seed catalog, she grows cross over flowers presented like haute couture collections, or Pantone colors: “...let us consider the hybridizers, and the horticulturists in general," she writes. "Their slogan is not only ‘Bigger and Better’ but ‘Change'—change for the sake of change, it seems. Say you have a nice flower like the zinnia—clean-cut, of interesting, positive form, with formal petals that are so neatly and cunningly put together, and the colors so subtle yet clear, that they have always been the delight of the of the still-life artist.” Not good enough for the horticultiurists, she notes, who've bred zinnias to look like chrysanthemums, catctuses, and dahlias. “Lewis Carroll was prophetic," White wrote. "Today, the garden men are quite as busy changing the colors of flowers as they are changing the size and shape.”
Sixty years later, this is revealing: the Zinnia Cactus 'Giant Fantasy,' that White poked fun of as blowsy and trendy in the '50s is now sold by Botanical Interests, which means it's officially tasteful and quaint. Look back at 19th-century seed catalogs and there's plenty of hyperbolic copy bragging up bigger, newer, better, plants that were garden staples by the mid-20th century. And now, 19th-century heirlooms are a thing. Though the embrace of heirlooms is about history, genetic diversity, and defying the fish tomato, it's also about the gee-whiz factor of a moon and stars melon, which isn't that different from the novelty appeal of a black petunia. As for the horticulturists, now that gardening itself has become somewhat trendy, I expect that they'll continue to seek out the increasingly hyperbolic, in form and name: among Poven Winners' 2012 plants is a daylily called 'Primal Scream,' and a hosta called 'Wheee!'
Unless western civilization collapses, garden plants will continue to be bred for unusual traits, then marketed in a manner not unlike paint colors or shoes. The Katherine Whites among us will continue to arch an eyebrow. And the trendmeisters will continue to evict old plants from their beds to make room for the new ones. I don't know where you fall on this spectrum, but unless you swap divided perennials or save your own seeds, you are pretty much stuck in the marketplace, with all its perks and perils. I advise checking out the product forums at Dave's Garden to check out other folks' experiences with specific companies, new cultivars, or old varieties people are struggling with now that the USDA zones have shifted. I'll never tell anyone what to grow in their garden, but I will say: no use in being a sucker, especially a sucker with $20 or $100 less in your bank account, and a whole bunch of dead plants in your yard.
Here's another side effect of gardening becoming fashionable again: the overall age demographic is now a lot younger. That's meant the launch of shops like Terrain. Owned by the same folks who run Urban Outfitters, Terrain sells garden trowels that are borderline fashion accessories. I don't know how durable they are (for the prices they're charging, they damn well better be!), but I think this is a huge shift that may not reverse itself anytime soon. Way back when, Target actually hired good designers and proved that cheap doesn't have to mean ugly, and it almost put K-Mart out of business. Now, enter Wilder Quarterly, a new periodical aimed at "plant enthusiasts of all kinds: indoor or outdoor gardeners, foodies, green thumbs, botanists, hobby farmers...anyone who gets excited about nature will appreciate this magazine." That's what Design*Sponge says about it. If you know what Design*Sponge is, you know it's kind of amazing they're writing about a gardening magazine—except, as you can tell by that description, it isn't a garden magazine. Which is why CoolHunting wrote about it too, explaining that it was founded by a 33-year-old advertising strategist named Celestine Maddy who began gardening in 2007 after moving into a ground-floor New York apartment. Wilder came into being after Maddy got frustrated with the plant and gardening magazines out there. They were overtechnical, boring, frumpy, or aimed at ladies of a certain age with money. I haven't seen a copy of Wilder Quarterly, but apparently it's beautiful, and so thick it's more like a book. The spreads I've seen remind me a lot of fashion magazines. But its holistic focus on plants—not specifically gardening, horticulture, hardscapes, or products, but the confluence of culture, nature, and people—is revolutionary. By reminding us that plants are part of nature, and not a paint chip or a shoe, Wilder Quarterly reframes the whole idea of gardens, and gardening (not to mention cooking, farming and mushroom-hunting). I think Katherine White would approve.
