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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.
In Pugwash, Mr. Lander said, his small retail greenhouse business serves mainly local residents and cottagers. He said.
"I’ve developed a niche here.......
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 petunia 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."
The SUPERTUNIA®BORDEAUX is also featured in the May 15th, 2009 P Allen Smith Garden Home Newsletter
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