The Real Green Industry: Plants

Plants represent a major part of the sustainability movement. All facets of the horticulture industry, from growers to retailers and landscape architects to consumers, need to understand how plants fit into the “green” picture.

“The significance in producing sustainable, low-maintenance crops at the grower level is relevant at the retail level as well,” said Ed Overdevest, president of Overdevest Nurseries in Bridgeton, N.J. “Nationwide, homeowners are seeking outstanding varieties that perform well in their landscapes, and are becoming more curious to know if they are produced in the same eco-friendly manner they’ve come to expect from other home and garden products they purchase for their families.”

Water-conserving plants, including drought-tolerant selections, natives and desert succulents, make up a sustainable landscape and are catching the eyes of more consumers.

Coreopsis ‘Pinwheel’ from Overdevest Nurseries’ Garden Splendor brand is a low-water-use plant. It’s a full-sun perennial hardy to USDA Hardiness Zone 6. Salvia ‘Sensation Rose’ from Novalis is a drought-tolerant selection that flowers from early summer through fall. It’s hardy to Zone 8.

When drought hits a region, landscape watering is often targeted with municipal restrictions. There are a multitude of drought-tolerant plants to grow and sell, from perennials and groundcovers to trees and shrubs.

Drought-tolerant perennials include Aster spp., Rudbeckia hirta, Geranium spp. and Baptisia australis, said Gordon Johnson, extension agent at University of Delaware Cooperative Extension. Drought-tolerant groundcovers include Juniperus horizontalis, Sedum spp. and Thymus serpyllum, Johnson said. For trees and shrubs try Liquidambar styraciflua, Quercus palustris, Cotinus coggygria, Picea abies, Hibiscus syriacus, Vitex agnus-castus and Pyracantha coccinea.

On the drier side

Wade Roitsch, nursery manager at YuccaDo Nursery in Hempstead, Texas, reports increased interest in desert succulents. The retail grower has been offering them for more than two decades.

“People say water is the next oil, and water is becoming so precious that more people are considering dry-loving plants and desert succulents,” Roitsch said. “Our niche is the new and unusual species in that category.”

Production costs of desert succulents are about the same and sometimes less expensive than typical nursery stock, he said. And propagation techniques have improved to include agaves from tissue culture and better seed selection.

EuroAmerican Propagators’ RetroSucculents line offers16 varieties, but will increase to 45 by the 2008-2009 season. Agave celsii ‘Nova,’ Aloe x ‘Pink Blush’ and Echeveria subrigida ‘Fire and Ice’ are a few of the durable and low-water-use plants that grow well in the landscape, in containers or as houseplants.

Finish times for ‘Nova’ are five months from a plug to a 4-inch pot or 4-inch to a 1-gallon; and six months from a 1-gallon to a 2-gallon. Finish times for ‘Pink Blush’ and ‘Fire and Ice’ are five months from a plug to a 4-inch container and five months from a 4-inch to a 1-gallon.

Creating a plan

Growing and marketing water-conserving plants is a good green step, but a new industry group wants to craft a more comprehensive plan for sustainable landscapes.

The Sustainable Sites Initiative (SSI) is a new effort to develop standards and guidelines for site development that will reduce the environmental impact of landscapes. SSI members include American Society of Landscape Architects, Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center and U.S. Botanic Garden. American Nursery & Landscape Association has a representative on the vegetation committee.

The standards are intended for use by designers, architects, contractors, engineers, developers, builders, maintenance crews, horticulturists and governments.

“The standards are an important tool for the nursery industry,” said Heather Venhaus, SSI project manager and environmental designer at Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center. “As the general population continues to learn more about environmental concerns such as climate protection, it’s more advantageous for growers to get out in front of these issues.”

SSI intends to supplement existing green building standards and rating systems and has the potential to serve as stand-alone guidelines for creating Sustainable Sites. The U.S. Green Building Council has pledged to include Sustainable Sites in future versions of their LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Green Building Rating System.

The initiative may help tie the landscape to the beginning of the building design process, instead of being an afterthought once the bulk of a project budget has already been spent, said Bob Dolibois, ANLA executive vice president.

SSI plans to release two interim reports before a final document is due in spring 2009.

The guidelines will be used to construct a ranking system (due spring 2011) with specific site-performance goals. These ratings will recognize performance in achieving a sustainable site. Credits will be assigned for meeting performance goals so that each site can be rated. A reference guide is due by spring 2012. It will be a user guide describing how various pilot projects achieved sustainability goals.

For more: Overdevest Nurseries, (888) 842-6567; www.overdevestnurseries.com. Novalis, (888) 845-1988; www.novalis.com. Gordon Johnson, University of Delaware Cooperative Extension, (302) 730-4000; gcjohn@udel.edu. EuroAmerican Propagators, (888) 323-0730; www.pweuro.com. YuccaDo Nursery, (979) 826-4580; www.yuccado.com. Heather Venhaus, Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, (512) 232-0200; www.sustainablesites.org.

- Kelli Rodda 

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Water-conserving plants

The term “sustainable” is being bounced around more than any other buzzword of this decade. But sustainability is no fad. It’s not a pipe dream. Every industry is jumping to find its slice of the green pie and market its sustainability products or practices to consumers.

Horticulture is the real green industry -- the original. But we can’t rest on our laurels. We must tout our products as sustainable and live by example. That means saving water and energy.

Water conservation affects every region in the country, whether there’s a drought or not. Growing and marketing water-conserving plants is an excellent and easy way to take advantage of the green movement.

Garden Centers of Colorado created a superior marketing campaign for plants that thrive in dry conditions. “Get X-Rated: Xeriscape Gardening” rates plants as X-rated, XX-rated and XXX-rated. Plants with one X thrive in slightly dry conditions; XX plants thrive in dry conditions; and XXX plants thrive in very dry conditions. It’s an easy-to-follow and exciting campaign.

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X-rated plants include linden, forsythia and foxglove. Pines, butterfly bush and daylilies fall in the XX-rated category. The heavyweights of the xeriscape varieties include bigtooth maple, sumac and penstemon.

For more: www.xratedgardening.com.

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The time is now to go green

As we move into 2008 we look back over the previous year and can see it was the year “green” moved from a minor niche to become a significant and growing segment of the marketplace.

Today there is significant increase in awareness of environmental issues. Al Gore was awarded the Nobel Prize for focusing public attention on global warming. And as a result there are signs of changes emerging in purchasing behavior.

In October 2007 Toyota announced that Prius sales rose 51 percent to 13,158 vehicles, from 8,733 in October of the year before. Even Wal-Mart says the environment is key to its mission to improve the quality of life for people around the world. With the introduction of organic cotton, sustainable seafood and safer chemicals, the trend is unmistakable.

Now it’s cool to do the right thing for the environment and for business. And the good news is the nursery industry is well-positioned to capitalize on this trend. At one level, we’re already green. Green is the color of leaves and photosynthesis; we help our customers use their green thumbs, and along the way we earn green dollars.

We can easily take advantage of the natural biological cycle to compost a lot of the waste material in our business, but there is a lot more we need to do if we are to achieve success in the 3 Es of sustainability: economic, environmental and (social) equity.

Throughout the year, we’ll dig a little deeper into individual examples and highlight areas where you can make a difference with positive benefits to the environment and to your business.

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- Ken Alston

Ken Alston is CEO of the environmental consulting firm MBDC, http://mbdc.com, and is the owner of Commonwealth Plants LLC., http://japanese-maple.com.

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Missouri actively markets native plants

The Grow Native! is a joint program between Missouri Department of Conservation (MDC) and Missouri Department of Agriculture (MDA). The program was designed to increase conservation awareness of native plants and their effective use.

MDA houses Grow Native! marketing and business development services for member businesses that supply native plants, seeds and related services such as design, installation and maintenance. Together, MDC’s and MDA’s efforts make it easy for everyone to discover, buy and successfully use Missouri source native plants on any landscape.

The program includes usage rights of the Grow Native! logo, point-of-purchase material and tags.

Devin Chandler, owner of Prairie Hill Farm in Auxvasse, Mo., is a member of the program. He grows primarily wildflowers and about 40 varieties of woodies.

“Our sales have really taken off since becoming part of this program,” Chandler said. “Grow Native! is great at promotion. They’re promoting natives to landscapers and homeowners. As a grower you wish you had more time to beat the streets, but these guys have a whole staff doing it for us. They’ve got some really nice tags from MasterTag with beautiful pictures.”

Growing natives is certainly part of the green movement, but it’s not without challenges. Chandler starts most of his plant material by seeds.

“Some wildflower seed has a stratification time of two to four months and some have poor germination rates,” Chandler said. “Some may take a warm period followed by a cold period and then won’t germinate for two years.”

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He’s constantly tweaking production.

For more: Grow Native!, (573) 522-4171; www.grownative.org. Devin Chandler, Prairie Hill Farm, (573) 387-4680; chandler@ktis.net.

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Carbon footprint: A representation of the effect human activities have on the climate in terms of the total amount of greenhouse gases produced (measured in units of carbon dioxide).

Integrated pest management (IPM): An ecologically based approach to pest control using a multi-disciplinary knowledge of crop/pest relationships, establishment of acceptable economic thresholds for pest populations and constant monitoring for potential problems.

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Sustainable development: Meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

Source: USDA’s Alternative Farming Systems Information Center.

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