|
|
|
|
Flower Power Pugwash..... petunia blooms big time
By MELANIE FURLONG Special
Halifax Chronicle Herald - Tue. Jul 22 -2008
Flipping through Martha Stewart Living, O, The Oprah Magazine, or Better Homes and Gardens, you may have come across a little Nova Scotia creation. Proven Winners, an Illinois company that sells high-quality flowering plants, is featuring the Supertunia Bordeaux, a beautiful, two-colour petunia developed by Ken Lander of Sunrise Greenhouses in Pugwash, in its latest advertising campaign.
The Pure Magic ad has appeared in about 35 major North American consumer magazines, and Proven Winners has already received thousands of responses from retailers. Lander sold the exclusive rights to propagate the plant to Proven Winners in 2004.
"They give you a few pennies on each plant sold and I get a royalty cheque from them once a year," he said in an interview. It’s the difference between a struggling, tiny little hole-in-the-wall, high-quality greenhouse business and making a comfortable living being able to do the thing you love."
In Pugwash, Mr. Lander said, his small retail greenhouse business serves mainly local residents and cottagers. But the customer base would not be enough to support a normal retail operation," he said.
"I’ve developed a niche here. The actual greenhouse business hardly makes a go of it; it’s the petunia that brings in my real living."
About 500,000 Supertunia Bordeaux plants were sold the first year, just under a million the second, and about 1.5 million the third. They are now sold across North America and in most European countries.
"Its popularity is just growing steadily," Mr. Lander said. It might be the first flower to be developed in Canada.
"My patent officer said she’d never seen a plant go this way across the border," Mr. Lander said. She always sees plants coming from the U.S. or Europe into Canada, but never the other way. Mine, as far as I know, is the first such Canadian development."
The retail cut flower and flowering plant business continues to grow around the world. According to a 2000 study by Terri Starman of Texas A&M University’s horticultural department, some 44 per cent of purchases are made in Europe, followed by 21 per cent in the United States and Canada and 15 per cent in Japan.
Arman Patel, executive director of Flowers Canada Retail, said the global retail flower market was worth $77 billion in 2004 and is worth nearly 35 per cent more today. Jeanine Standard, the North American spokeswoman for Proven Winners, said the Supertunia Bordeaux is one of its more popular plants.
"I think a lot of it has to do with the variety of the colour on the petal," she said. People really love seeing bicolour plants. They like the pink flower with the deep plum vein in the centre — that works very well in combination with other plants."
Ms. Standard said all of the Supertunias are self-cleaning, heat-tolerant, popular with hummingbirds and vigorous growers. The Bordeaux is a strong seller and performer in baskets and containers," Ms. Standard said.
"In order for a plant to come into the Proven Winners line, it has to do well throughout North America. Otherwise, we bring plants under the Proven Selections line, which are more regional types of plants that we wouldn’t recommend in all parts."
Proven Winners propagates thousands of varieties of plants every year. In Canada, its three licensed propagators are Nordic Nurseries of Abbotsford, B.C., Dentoom’s Greenhouses in Red Deer, Alta., and Ed Sobkowich Greenhouses in Grimsby, Ont.
The plants are vegetatively propagated, which means they’re grown from a piece of plant tissue so the quality of the plant, the size of the bloom and the colour and height can be controlled.
The plants leave the propagator’s nursery as liners just seven to eight centimetres deep and the size of a quarter around. "We sell the liners to the greenhouses and they grow the plants and sell them to garden centre retailers or big-box stores," Ms. Standard said. "There are many fingers in the pie."
Mr. Lander, a self-taught gardener and entrepreneur, said he started hybridizing in 1998 just for the fun of it.
"By 1999 and 2000," he said, "I had come up with a couple of petunia and geranium plants that were interesting, but they didn’t go anywhere."
Finally, in 2001, he was ready to send some flowers to Proven Winners.
"I sent eight plants to Proven Winners for trial," he said, "and the Bordeaux was just one of the herd. There were two very similar. One was a slightly larger flower, a crisper, rosier flower, and I kind of had my eye on it. This one was a little more subdued, but as it turned out, it was the better plant."
The Bordeaux won several awards from U.S. universities at plant trials, and three years later Mr. Lander signed his contract with Proven Winners.
He is still hybridizing other varieties of plants.
"We’ve always got hopes," he said, "but we have one in the Calibrachoa class that’s pretty exceptional. It’s in a very big pack, so for it to distinguish itself, it will have to be truly exceptional."
Ms. Standard said Proven Winners works with many small breeders.
"In our experience, many just have one or two plants," she said.
"It’s not uncommon at all for a person to have just one variety that they’ve focused on. It does take a lot of concentration to perfect something like that."
|
|
|
|
