Roses and retail

I read this quote a while back, "Sooner or later, every gardener comes around to roses". I might not have the quote exactly right, but something tells me it was from author Christine Allen. Most everyone has a turn at retail too, and in this post, I'll write about both roses and retail. So if you're not interested in the one topic, hopefully it'll be worth reading about the other.

Let me start by saying that I don't love every rose. Some are more garden-worthy than others, and the best of them aren't always the ones that take up the most space at your local garden center. But why? Why doesn't the best plant always produce the most sales?

Because retail can be incredibly superficial, perhaps even in my beloved garden centers. This statement could be applied to sales in general, but since I've spent a lot of time in retail, I'll limit my comments to what I know.

Take the famous example of the 'Peace' rose. Here's a picture:

Nice picture, and definitely beyond my skills as a photographer. It was taken from a flickr user audreyjm529, who shared it for others to use, so long as they give credit. Thanks muchly.

It's a nice looking rose too, on its best days. I don't own it anymore, though - I shovel pruned it. I found it to be susceptible to disease, the flowers faded too quickly, and I didn't much like the overall look of the shrub. I won't argue much about its merits in the garden, but there's no question that it's been an incredibly successful rose commercially.

Did this rose deserve this level of commercial success? I don't know. One thing that seems to be commonly agreed upon, though, is that it's unlikely to have been as successful if it were sold under it's original name: Madame A. Meilland. This rose was the beneficiary of a certain amount of marketing genius, which had the rose rebranded as 'Peace' just in time to commemorate the ending of World War II. It's a decision that has carried it through the decades, and I would be surprised if this rose were not available in every Wal-Mart in North America each spring for the rest of my natural life.

Have a look at another rose, 'Earth Song':

This one's my photo, so don't judge the rose by the photographer. This rose, bred by Dr. Griffith Buck in 1975, is un-freakin-stoppable. It has large, attractive flowers all season, on a vigorous plant and it doesn't require any kind of spraying to keep healthy (a requirement in my garden).

Now, why don't you find 'Earth Song' in any of those cute little Wal-Mart rose boxes in early spring? Does the rose have some failing that I've missed? Or is it just that a rose bred by a reasearcher at Iowa State Univeristy, in a program designed to develop disease resistance in roses, lacks the wow factor to anchor any amount of retail space.

(But wait... 'Earth Song'... isn't that a newly released song from the late Michael Jackson? Maybe good ol' Dr. Buck could have his day in the sun too, if only some clever marketer could make the right pitch.)

That's the retail climate we have. The merits of the product are sometimes secondary. It's more important that a product has a story to tell. Which brings me to this:

Okay, I didn't take this picture either (obviously), but the way I understand it, it's considered fair use to put it in my blog for the purposes of making commentary. So here's my commentary: what the heck is the Sham-wow doing on the shelves at my previous employer, Staples?

Seriously. I'm not picking on Staples. They were very good to me as an employer. I still have a lot of friends who work there. But I have to question, why they risk their reputation (or do they call it a "brand story" these days?) by allowing product onto the shelves that would make their most important customer pause for a moment, shake her head, and question if this is really her kind of store.

Sure, it makes for great margin to expand into budget console video games, Kraft dinner, and "As Seen on TV", but what the heck does a Slap Chop or a Snuggie have to do with running an office?

Staples isn't alone in this, of course. And they have a good excuse. They wouldn't be stocking it if customers weren't buying it.

I know that my ranting is pointless (or as a colleague of mine once said, more colourfully "You're farting into thunder, Jason") BUT...

Products should be stocked and sold because of their merits, not because they appear in an ad with Avril Lavigne (who did a bang-up job improving sales of Canon cameras when I was running the technology department at Staples, despite the fact that her credentials as a photographer are left to the imagination). Likewise, a rose should make its way into your garden because it has merit as a plant, not because it's the newest introduction from a company that pumps out 10 new rose hybrids a year. Most of these new introductions will be eventually dropped from their selection, and quietly forgotten - despite the glossy prictures and descriptions on their tags.

So what's the alternative?

I'd say look at the roses that have been around a while. Gardeners have tried them, and the roses have stuck around for a reason - not the least of which is that they have the health and vigour to stay alive without too much attention.

Without further ado, here are some of my recommendations:

This one's named Ispahan. Speaking of longevity, it's been around since around 1830. As a damask rose, it has an amazing scent. Ispahan is healthy, vigourous, and disease resistant.

Zephirine Drouhin is a bourbon climber from the 1860's. And get this: it's thornless.

This photo's from another pro, the flickr user "sportsilliterate". The rose is Sally Holmes, a hybrid musk. It's newer (1976), but from an old family of roses.

If you have some time, and an interest in checking out cool roses, go to www.helpmefind.com for the best source of online info I've found on roses.

Here are some other great roses that have stood the test of time in gardens:

Complicata
Buff Beauty
Ghislaine de Feligonde
Reine des Violettes
Rose de Rescht

There are load of others, and don't get me wrong... I'm not completely against new roses. In particular, I'm a fan of the English Roses being bred by David Austin - maybe because his goal as a breeder is to bring the merits of some of these old garden roses back into modern varieties.

I guess my point is this: if you enjoy gardening at all, you'll probably come around to roses at some point too. But the wrong rose can dampen one's enthusiasm pretty quickly. Don't get sucked in by the latest and greatest, because chances are, you're buying into the "Sham Wow" factor. Have a look around for some of these amazing older varieties, or at the very least, spring for a good Austin rose. I think you'll be a lot happier with the results.

Adventures in sheet mulch

Before I give you the low-down on the mess I'm making of what used to be the back lawn, I took a couple of pictures of some new colour in the yard. The cool part of early spring (okay, still winter at this point, but it defenitely feels like spring) is that there's a whole different palette of colours to get excited over. No, I'm not going to wax all Robert Frost on ya... ("Stay gold, Ponyboy"), but those first greens really have a different look to them.

The lightest green is Sedum spectabile "Brilliant". The leaves at the top left, floating above everything, are from an alba rose, Alba Semi-plena. There are also some columbine seedlings coming up at the bottom of the frame, and it looks like a daffodil in the middle there too.

Green is great, but new shoots come in other colours too. Here you'll see the bronze and purple combination of virginia bluebells (Mertensia Virginica) coming up:

I took a picture of the purple emerging shoots of Blue False Indigo too, but I'm afraid it didn't turn out well enough to post. Maybe it wasn't all that spectacular to begin with, but when I pulled up the fallen leaves, and found them pushing up through the soil, it was enough to convince me to pull out the camera. There's just something about those early purple shades on the shoot of a hosta, or the fresh red on the tops of roses that somehow excites me (strangely) perhaps more than the much more exuberant shades of later in the season.

Okay, on to sheet mulch.

My long-term goal is to have all the grass in the yard taken up by garden space. I can safely admit that here because I'm pretty sure my wife has already figured out my scheme. I usually make up some sort of excuse related to lawn mowing. In this case, the lawn was on a pretty steep slope, and really was a bit of a pain to mow. So I promised to put in some herbs and vegetables, and got the go-ahead to garden it.

When I've previously negotiated away lawn space, it was a mixed blessing. Yes, more space to dig in. But then we had to remove the sod, right? Well, we did remove it, but I'm not all that sure we needed to.

This fall, I read the book Perennial Vegetables by Eric Toensmeier (excellent book, as are several others by the same publisher, Chelsea Green). He wrote a short description of some of his personal landscaping. The author wanted to remediate his front yard, where the soil and lawn was in pretty bad shape. Instead of bringing in the heavy equipment, he simply covered it with a layer of cardboard, and then covered that layer with mulch.

The sheet of carboard served to smother the lawn and weeds, and the organic matter layered above would break down over time to make for more fertile soil. Why didn't I think of that in the first place?

So I'm doing something similar. I'm using several layers of newspaper to smother the lawn, and I'm covering it with what I have on hand - mostly fallen leaves from a couple of big native maples (Acer macrophyllum) in my back yard. Here's a picture:

None too pretty at this point, is it? That's pretty much been the feedback from my wife at this point.

"Just wait until I get the borage planted in there... it'll look great!" was my response. Now, I'm not sure if she's looked up images of borage on the internet, and just doesn't share my opinion of the ornamental nature of the plant, but she's not yet convinced.

I'm sure the neighbours have noticed I'm up to something too, but on the whole, they're a pretty easygoing bunch. At least I haven't started planting potatoes in the front yard.

Yet.