Welcome to The Weeding Gnome

Brought to you by Plants Nouveau

In today's Issue:

Readers Speak Out

Introducing Echinacea purpurea ‘Coconut Lime’

--- The Garden Rant ---

This week, I am in Fort Lauderdale attending the TPIE (Tropical Plant Industry
Expo), looking for - you guessed it - new plants.

Imagine that.

While I walk the aisles searching for innovation, I would like to share some of
letters I've received from readers in response to past e-letter issues. I love
reading the responses, especially from my readers who read The Weeding Gnome right
away. Friday nights are so exciting because I get so many cool and often heated
responses from readers who agree and sometimes disagree with my opinions.

No matter the opinion, I love reading them and I really do look forward to getting
the comments, so keep them coming!

From the issue titled "Gnomes Celebrate Christmas and Corn Ruins Your Engine", I
received this thoughtful response from my longtime nursery buddy and one of the
founders of North Creek Nurseries, and owner of the newly formed Green Light
Plants, Dale Hendricks. Dale knows way more about being green than most people
ever will. He has lived his entire life being green, so I do completely trust his
comment to be well founded. I learned a lot from Dale's comment. I hope you find
it educational too.

"Hey wonderful Angie. I really love the Weeding Gnome and bless you for doing it.
Anyway I want to add a bit of info about corn, engines + ethanol.

"First, corn is good! It's just a question of how it's grown. It's a heavy feeder,
and to grow it well and in a sustainable and carbon/planet friendly manner ideally
it would be grown on a given plot of land perhaps every 3-4 years in a good crop
rotation scheme.

"Corn is not bad (you can make this argument for any plant really, they're just
doing they're job and sometimes in the wrong place....)it's just usually grown in
a nonrenewable manner that can be quite a problem for soils, water, the climate.

"Ethanol can be produced in a sustainable, renewable manner and the "leftovers"

can be excellent animal feeds, fertilizers or can be used to grow mushrooms and
many other good things. It's just that these co-products are "pollutants" if
they're thrown away and at the same time can be quite valuable if they're planned
for and used well. Ethanol is basically liquid sunshine, a very green, completely
renewable fuel that is a zillion times safer and better for our engines than
gasoline.

"WHAT??? Yes, our cars are tuned for and maximized to gasoline but (many of the
newer ones are "flex fuel" and can go with either fuel) can run much longer,
cleaner and cooler on ethanol. Sure, cars can be screwed up by having to deal with
varying proportions of gas/ethanol, but the ethanol itself is not the problem.
It's just a matter of design and tuning.
"Did you know that most if not all cars we're "flex fuel" until prohibition and
that most farmers produced a bit of their own ethanol until that time too???

"So, to recap: Corn is good, it just depends on how it's grown (hooray for
local/organic/diverse and sustainable agriculture!). Ethanol is good too, it just
depends on what feed stocks it's grown from and what's done with the co-products.
Ethanol is safer than gasoline and has the potential to be grown locally and
renewably, it just rarely is. The simplest way I know to convey this is the old
saying: "it's always possible to do a good thing stupidly.""

Wow! I had no idea, but I'm so glad Dale wrote in because now I know. There's so
much mis-information out there, and it's not only about politics.

To sum it all up - it seems that even the corn that is used to produce ethanol is
affected by proper growing practices. This gives buy organic and local a new
meaning, doesn't it?

In response to the issue titled Winter Hardy Echinaceas, You Betcha! I received
this lovely vote of support for our introductions from Sandra Gerdes the manager
of the test gardens at Better Homes and Gardens. If these plants can overwinter
outside, in the ground in Des Moines, Iowa, where the trial gardens are located -
you can count on them being truly winter hardy just about anywhere. I love when an
e-letter issue prompts testimonials like this.

"Just a note of support for Echinacea Hot Papaya. You gave me one from your booth
at PPA in Philly last year(2008) and I hand-carried it back to Des Moines, IA and
planted it in our BHG Test Garden. We have lots of clay so I put it on a slope to
help with drainage. We had a cold winter last year (2 days of –19 F.) with very
little snow cover.

"This year Hot Papaya bloomed in mid summer and threw out a few extra flowers
later on. It was a great conversation piece on our public visitor days!

"This year I’ve added E. Coconut Lime, Meringue and Milkshake. I like to trial
perennials for at least two seasons so I’ll keep you posted. Thanks for sharing
your treasures with us for evaluation."

Just today, I found out that Echinacea 'Coconut Lime' will be featured in the
April issue of Better Homes and Gardens, so it must have done well When Sandra
and the editors like a plant, they talk about it in the magazine. That's the best
kind of publicity we could ever ask for. Hooray Coconut Lime for Coconut Lime!
Arie Blom, the breeder should be proud.

And finally, last week's issue, Time to Change - My MANTS Epiphany drew lots of
Amens and you go girl comments, but this one was great from April Herring, a
member of the Texas Landscape and Nursery Association education committee.

"Great rant Angela! I too feel this industry moves at a snails pace with
technology, it drives me mad! I think I am making some progress by being involved
in the Texas Nursery and Landscape Association. I am on the Education committee
and have mentioned this in our meetings. Next week we are having a conference all
about technology. I hope all goes well! I will be sitting in as part of a panel
discussion on the use of social media so I will mention your rant!

"One thing I still don't get are people who still don't even own a computer! The
ol', "I don't do computers" will not work anymore. When I was chairman for the
Houston region I went digital with our newsletter and got resistance from members
because of they don't use computers, these were people in retail! How do they
communicate with their customers? Anyway I hope this conference opens the eyes of
some of the Texas nursery industry.

"As for your marketing question, I think one way to market plants is through
social media. Provide information through these sites to get people excited about
your product, but it need to be in a personal way, not a sales pushy way. One
example of a person doing very well with this concept is Pat Fitzgerald in
Ireland, he does a fantastic job of this and has people across the globe wanting
his plants. Lastly, keep up the good work, I love all the great plants you have!
My co-worker Holly and I were talking in the booth about how cool some of the
Echinaceas are!"

So, as I prepare to spend my last morning in sunny, warm Fort Lauderdale looking
at new tropicals (sorry to rub it in...), I hope you enjoyed these comments. I
enjoy them. Keep them coming, they keep it all real.

I look forward to reporting about this trade show and getting back to my new
plants in next week's issue.

Until next week...

Happy Weeding.

Angela Treadwell Palmer

President, Plants Nouveau

--- Angela's Garden Notes ---

Introducing Echinacea purpurea ‘Coconut Lime’

A fantastically fashionable, double white coneflower that will bloom all summer.

Plants Nouveau is proud to introduce the first-ever double white echinacea. This
new selection exhibits a stout, sturdy habit and numerous white, fully double
pompom-like flowers. The center of each bloom begins leaf green and changes to
light lime green as it ages. Echinacea 'Coconut Lime' comes to us from the
breeding brilliance of AB-Cultivars breeder Arie Blom in The Netherlands.

This new selection exhibits a stout, sturdy habit and numerous white, fully double
pompon-like flowers. The center of each bloom begins leaf green and changes to
light lime green as it ages. The plant is well branched and very floriferous,
producing numerous straight and sturdy flower stems. The cone consists of pales
that have developed into tubular, greenish-white ray petals.

Coconut Lime is one of those plants that blooms all summer in my garden. Deadhead
it in a timely manner and you’ll have delicious lime green blooms for arrangements
until the first hard frost. I have seen this plant in trial gardens from Seattle
to Massachusetts and south from Dallas to Pensacola. This coneflower truly can
grow well all over the US (and beyond…)

It’s so nice to see the plants we’ve been trialing all over the country growing so
well in so many places. I expect Coconut Lime will be a long-loved selection in
many gardens.

Size: 24-30″ tall by 24-30″ tall

USDA hardiness Zones: 5(4) – 9
Sun/shade: full sun
Soil: average garden soil, well drained
Moisture: moist, but well drained to get established, once established, it is very
drought tolerant
Disease and Pests: none known
Landscape use: Foundation plantings, front or middle of the border, urban gardens,
containers
Market appeal/Uniqueness: The first double white echinacea ever! A trendy lime
green bloom on a sturdy, floriferous plant. This introduction couldn’t have come
a t a better time. Lime green is so “in” right now that gardener’s are searching
for green-blooming plants for their gardens.
Propagation methods: tissue culture, divisions
Bloom time: Early July for 8 to 12 weeks