New Plants or Old
Is there a place for both?
There is some debate over the value of growing, selling and promoting old-fashioned plants. Will they make money? Will the consumers buy them? Is anyone interested in old-fashioned plants?
Ideally Horti.Com.Au would love to hear from you .. your comments about what you think on this topic.
Old-fashioned plants have these attributes:
- many are tried and tested to the local conditions
- many people can relate to them and for some, provide a degree of nostalgia
- many are no longer propagated en masse, and therefore provide a marketing advantage in retail
Unfortunately, with the focus of major horticultural marketing bodies preoccupation with NEW releases, old-fashioned plants are often overlooked and neglected… until someone decides to reinvent the wheel (and in some cases try to PBR varieties that have been in gardens for a few decades).
For landscape designers who are charged with the task of recreating a heritage garden, sourcing these traditional plants can be a challenge. A new cultivar is not the same as a cultivar that was around at the turn of 1900′s and are understandably not suitable.
Gardening magazine, books, television has the responsibility to cover all plants, including these ‘heritage’ plants. It is these old-fashioned plants that got most of us into gardening and are likely to get the new generation into gardening.
In simple terms, if these plants are still around they have proven themselves far beyond any new release.
