Photos courtesy of Christen Farm Nursery

A nearly two-decade bottom line boosting track record has Lisa Rensberry downright giddy when it comes to the bare root hardy hibiscus from Walter’s Gardens in Zeeland, Michigan.

“We’ve had [the variety] in our store now for 15-20 years, and I still remember the original account manager that came in and told me, ‘Lisa, if you put this little bare root into a 3-gallon container, and you sell it for this much, you’ll be really happy someday that you listened to me, and he was right,” says the owner of Christen Farm Nursery in Onalaska, Wisconsin.

The independent garden center sells nursey plants, professional lawn care services and landscaping supplies a stone’s throw due east of the Minnesota border in central Wisconsin. The IGC got its first taste of the bare root hardy hibiscus with the very first basic red varieties.

Now, according to Rensberry, local customers are just as hooked as she is, often swinging by the store before new plant material has even arrived to see which colors Christen will be offering for the spring season. ‘Spinderella’ and ‘French Vanilla’ were two of the popular new varieties of the Proven Winners-bred line this year.

“They’ve become a bit of a collector’s piece for our customers over the years,” she says. “I have the same people each year that will call or message or just stop in on a whim and say, ‘What are the new hibiscus this year?’ Usually they are all sold and spoken for before I can even get them into the garden center.”

Rensberry says another aspect of the bare root hardy hibiscus she enjoys is the fact that the plant “basically sells itself.” Its low maintenance nature (plant it in a 3-gallon pot and watch it grow) as well as the “large dinner plate-size” blooms that homeowners go nuts for are two additional reasons customers keep coming back and asking for the variety by name.

“The breeding is really phenomenal as well. They’re keeping the home gardeners intrigued with new colors every season,” Rensberry says. “They are hardy to Zone 4, which is another big selling point for us, and we just really like the tropical look they have to them.”

Keeler says the group’s experience with Argus started in 1997 with the Argus Classic system. They’ve recently upgraded to the Argus Titan controller, which Keeler says is “a very powerful system with a lot of the additional features that we like.”

“The biggest thing [the Titan] has helped us with is developing an integration between the environmental control system and our traveling irrigation booms,” he says. “Today we’re using the Argus system to tell the booms when to go, so the system itself is making decisions based on the environmental conditions — when to change or adjust our misting cycles on our propagated cuttings.”

Prior to achieving this level of integrated control, Keeler says that growers would often have to make a “mad dash” back to the greenhouse during inclement weather to adjust the system manually.

Of course, the Titan system would not be able to adjust to environmental conditions autonomously without a network of connected sensors within the greenhouses. Keeler notes that recently upgraded temperature and humidity sensors “seem more durable” than the previous models.

“One other aspect that has really helped us save on our maintenance and labor costs is the wireless bridge capability,” he says. “We have some off-site wells located about a half mile away that we need to turn on and off throughout the year, and we’re a pretty lightning strike-prone region. In the past, we’ve had some trouble with lightning striking those wires and shorting the system. With the wireless ethernet bridge as they call it, that is no longer an issue.”

A commitment to personalized customer service is yet another reason Jolly Farmer appreciates the partnership it has worked out with the Argus Controls.

“They’ve done very well over the years on customer service, even assigning us one of their technicians to look after us, which has been a huge help,” Keeler says. “And we’re of course very grateful for the work they’ve done to merge the Classic hardware with the newer Titan system. We didn’t have to just scrap the whole thing and go and replace everything [when we upgraded].”

So far, 2020 has certainly provided at lot of “firsts” for many people.

For Greg Cuthbert, co-owner of Cuthbert’s Greenhouse in Groveport, Ohio, it was his first spring season sourcing plant starts from Plantpeddler. Plantpeddler also had a first this year — offering truck delivery to Ohio and the surrounding states.

“We’re in our third generation now,” Cuthbert says. “We’ve learned that when you start with quality it’s a lot easier to finish with a quality product.” And Cuthbert declares Plantpeddler’s starts “quality product.”

Cuthbert’s operation grows across two sites around the greater Columbus metro area and, depending on the timing, the group’s commercial and retail greenhouses are bursting with a wide array of spring annuals, perennials, garden mums, poinsettias and more.

This season, Cuthbert made the call to go with Plantpeddler when sourcing his spring supply of Rieger begonia liners, a flower he seemingly could not grow enough of this spring. Having admittedly experienced inconsistent performance with previous suppliers, he figured why not go with Plantpeddler, a company he had worked with before.

Truth be told, the co-owner and head grower was beyond thrilled with the results of this latest venture. He describes Plantpeddler’s Rieger begonia as “really prolific in bloom with great, bright colors. Really a good plant for springtime and that Mother’s Day time.”

Of course, in horticulture any plant genetic material will be painstakingly evaluated on its own merit. The Rieger begonias from Plantpeddler stood the test in that regard, as well.

“We were just highly, highly satisfied with the uniformity of these liners that we received from them,” Cuthbert says, adding that he’ll certainly look into duplicating the effort in the next spring production round, as long as the demand is there. He also notes some vigorous disease resistance in this year’s variety as yet another plus.

“Like I told them the other day, I’m definitely interested in trying a few more items from them since we’ve kind of had such a good start together, he says. “We’re going to trial some samples and look a little bit closer into their product mix to see what else they have that fits what we do.

“And, who knows? Maybe we can grow a little bit with them.”

Photo courtesy of Creekside Nursery

Jerry Simpson, who co-owns Creekside Nursery in Dallas, North Carolina with his wife Jenny, says the retail side of the business is what primarily drives sales. That includes annuals and perennials grown in greenhouses, but also shrubs and trees produced outdoors.

Annuals specifically, he says, account for about 70% of what Creekside grows under cover. Much of that product is geared towards the busy spring season. That’s true even this year, when sales have been different amid the on-going coronavirus pandemic. Simpson adds that Proven Winners is the main supplier of the company’s annual varieties.

“We’re known as a destination around here for Proven Winners annuals – and perennials too,” he says. “It brings people in.”

Creekside has been working with Proven Winners since 2013’s sell season when Simpson began looking at what he was planning to grow for 2014. When he was shopping around, he was looking for 4” offerings to fill bench space.

“I found Proven Winners’ retail resource guide,” he says. “So I found that, and it was all laid out for us. We used, and still do, use all that marketing power from the tags to the supplemental stuff that they have on their website that we use on ours and in social media. All of it’s there for us.”

When growing Proven Winners annuals – including Supertunia® and Superbells® – he says they’ve all been easy to grow. Additionally, Simpson says there’s an added benefit in knowing the plants he’s growing have been tested for quality and proven to sell.

“They put all the work into figuring out what’s going to sell or doesn’t sell,” he says. “It doesn’t become a Proven Winner unless it goes through the whole trial process.”

As for the varieties, Simpson loves the Superbells® – a calibrachoa that grows between 6” and “10 – because it performs great in hanging baskets.

“From ‘Holy Moly’ to ‘Tropical Sunrise’, we love those in hanging baskets,” he says. “Very compact, easy to grow.”

“We plant it in the landscape or in hanging baskets and people love it,” he says. “Particularly with ‘Bubblegum’, it’s flower power is incredible. And if you can establish the plant early on, it has such a vigorous root system that it’s going to get itself well-rooted so the customer is going to happy. And that’s what we want.”