In the Garden Articles

Spring Pack Trials

by Joan S. Bolton

Imagine stepping into a living catalog of hundreds of the most perfectly grown ornamental flowers.

That's what Spring California Pack Trials are all about.

The event, which is open to the trade only, just swept through about 40 commercial greenhouses from San Diego to the Central Coast to San Francisco. The annual extravaganza is a showcase for the folks who breed the flowers and produce the seed that eventually ends up as bedding plants available anywhere from your local specialty nursery to RiteAid to Home Depot. It attracts industry types from around the world.

These folks are nearly invisible to home gardeners. But their trials offer a sweet preview of what has either just arrived or is coming soon to nursery’s shelves.

Rows upon rows of pony packs, 4-inch pots and 1-gallon containers fill lavish displays, with each leaf, petal and plant absolutely perfect.

Here's a glimpse of went on behind closed doors.

Bodger Seeds & Botanicals

"West Coast gardeners have a real appetite for anything that’s different," said Steve Jones, Bodger's director of sales and marketing. The company began breeding and producing flower seeds in 1890. An additional line, Bodger Botanicals, produces rooted and unrooted cuttings.

Perhaps the most outrageous of the new introductions in Bodger’s Lompoc greenhouses were Giant Spinners gerbera daisies. Shaggy hot pink and bright orange flowers the size of salad plates bloomed atop plants up to 3 feet tall. Equally impressive were strappy pink cordylines (Cordyline 'Electric Pink') and a regal pelargonium, Solstice 'Chocolate', which bore dark, reddish brown flowers that contrasted with medium-green, crinkly leaves.

There were also twists on old favorites. White bacopa came in petite and extra large: 'Nano'; as a compact bloomer, and 'Giga' as a robust rambler. Increasingly popular kangaroo paws ran the gamut, too, with Anigozanthos 'Kanga' hybrids forming multiple, colorful fans that reached knee-high, while ’Big Roo’, bearing fuzzy, yellow, orange or red flowers, soared 5 to 6 feet tall.

Floranova

This independent breeder of bedding and pot plants is based in Foxley, England, but has a greenhouse in Lompoc. Several Brits came over for the company’s trials.

"Normally we just talk to our distributors. We are here to show varieties that we breed to the industry. Competitors, growers, retail centers. It's the biggest opportunity to showcase our products," said Ralph Cockburn, Group Marketing Manager.

Specialties include the Horizon series of pelargoniums, which bloom in 23 different colors, and F1 vincas, which have been bred to resist disease and grow more vigorously than ordinary, open-pollinated plants.

Floranova also displayed bedding salvias (Salvia splendens) in unusual colors. Along with the standard fire-engine red, these salvias bloomed in shades of lavender, orange, bronze and pink, with some bearing more than one color on the same flower spike.

Babybella flowering tobacco (F1 Nicotiana x hybrida 'Babybella'), with its burgundy, tubular flowers, was striking. Started from seed in December, it was more than 3 feet tall.

Cockburn said Floranova donates its pack trial plants to the city of Lompoc when the trials are over.

Ball FloraPlant

A part of the giant Ball Horticultural Company, the Ball FloraPlant greenhouses in Arroyo Grande are where plant breeders create what they call "vegetative plant material." These new hybrids are sold as tiny, unrooted cuttings to commercial growers and include 450 different annual and perennial bedding plants.

Interesting foliage plants were on display. 'Wild Lime' coleus was a solid chartreuse, while 'Florida Sun Jade' coleus was blood red with a chartreuse edge. 'Blazin' Lime' Iresine came in variegated lime and cream.

One display sandwiched a Lamium with green leaves and a yellow edge (Lamium maculatum 'Anne Greenaway') between a New Guinea impatiens bearing orange and bronze leaves and orange flowers (Celebrette 'Light Coral') and a bright pink double impatiens, Fiesta 'Rose'.

Other vignettes included a moonlight garden composed of white-blooming flowers and silvery foliage, and a small-space garden with diminutive versions of marguerite, calibrachoa, heliotrope, lantana and bedding geraniums.

Greenheart Farms

You may have noticed the Greenheart Farms trucks that ply the Central Coast. Those vehicles mostly deliver tiny vegetable transplants -- broccoli, lettuce, cauliflower and the like -- to local growers.

But Greenheart also breeds and produces flowering plants, including poinsettias and about 2.5 million miniature and garden roses, said Karen Franck, Program Manager.

At the pack trials, Greenheart shared space with two other breeders: Sahin, a flower seed company in the Netherlands; and Dummen, a German company that markets under the Red Fox name and specializes in pelargoniums, poinsettias, osteospermums, New Guinea impatiens, petunias and begonias.

Just as eye-catching as the rows of beautifully blooming plants were the colorful plant tags, designer pots and banners from John Henry, a packing and promotional materials company.

Cute containers in lavender, lime green and baby blue were a far cry from traditional black plastic pots. In another switch, some plant tags offered recipes and entertaining tips on the back, rather than instructions about plant care.

Benary

This German company considers itself the ground floor of plant breeding.

"We’re truly the plankton in the ocean," said Duane Sinning. "We supply the genetics to the people who produce the seeds. The seed broker sells the seeds to the young plant plug producer. The plug producer sells the plants to the wholesale grower or finisher. The finisher sells the plants to the retail nurseries."

Benary’s pack trial offerings in a rented greenhouse in Goleta included many forms of tuberous begonias, long-blooming pentas and a seemingly infinite number of different color combinations of pansies. Long benches were also filled with bright vincas and shade-loving impatiens.

Containers of compatible companions were on display, too. Bold red pentas bloomed over black-eyed Susans (Rudbeckia), dainty yellow creeping zinnias and the spiky, blue-gray leaves of cottage pinks. Lavender-blooming pentas, paired with multi-hued ornamental cabbages, presented a quieter composition.

PlantHaven

This Santa Barbara-based company is an oddity in the pack trials world -- it doesn’t grow plants. Instead, PlantHaven assists plant breeders by patenting, licensing and promoting particular varieties. This was the second year the company has participated in the trials.

"These are new plants that our licensees are growing," said owner Maureen Needham. "We want to support our licensees."

PlantHaven borrowed greenhouse space at Island View Nursery, a retail nursery in Carpinteria. As such, the company was able to use the nursery’s products to set up imaginative displays, including a whimsical collage of colorful cottage pinks (Dianthus) atop a full-sized bamboo bed frame (truly a composition of "bedding plants").

Euphorbia Glacier Blue Tasmanian Tiger 01 137 235

Also striking were giant, perfectly formed Mystic dahlias; sweet little perennial pansies Blue Moon and Starry Night; and two variegated euphorbias, Glacier Blue and Tasmanian Tiger.

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Seeds of Wisdom

Spring pack trials revealed the importance of checking plant tags to figure out how large your bedding plants will grow. For example, while many petunias spread only a foot or two, the new Blanket petunias by Bodger Botanicals spread 4 feet in a single season.