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Plant Select Program Presents More Choices to Local Gardeners

Posted on: Thursday, 30 March 2006, 12:00 CST

By Mary Jean Porter, The Pueblo Chieftain, Colo.

Mar. 30--The bright sunshine, higher elevation and widely fluctuating temperatures of the Rocky Mountain region often are unkind to plants from other areas and frustrate gardeners trying to grow them.

Plants native to Colorado and elsewhere in the world with similar conditions offer better chances for success. And one program, Plant Select, has brought many such plants to Colorado and made them available to gardeners after extensive trials. The cooperative program is administered by Colorado State University and Denver Botanic Gardens and funded by industry memberships and royalties paid by growers. The program's purpose is to find, identify and distribute the best plants for gardens and landscapes in the Rocky Mountains and the high plains.

Hardy yellow and purple ice plants from South Africa and salvias and snow daisies from western Asia join more familiar phlox and penstemons on the Plant Select roster. The eight Plant Select choices for 2006 include one with a really interesting history: Kintzley's Ghost honeysuckle (Lonicera reticulata) was found in the 1930s growing on the grave of Dr. Kintzley, an early Iowa State University horticulture professor. Another selection, Panchito manzanita (Arctostaphylos coloradoensis), hails from the Uncompahgre Plateau in western Colorado and blooms February through April.

Linda McMulkin, Pueblo County horticulture agent for CSU Cooperative Extension Service, said the program isn't as widely known in Southern Colorado as in the northern part of the state but more people are asking her about it all the time.

"I think it's a great opportunity for people to have access to plants from other parts of the world and other parts of Colorado," McMulkin said. "People from the (Denver) Botanic Gardens go around and explore areas with similar conditions to ours - the Mediterranean region and South Africa, and the Western Slope of Colorado into Utah."

McMulkin said evaluations for some Plant Select plants indicate they are not always ideal for Pueblo, but she's had good luck growing some of the salvias and plans to plant more Plant Select choices when she expands her home garden. And she does talk about Plant Select in the Master Gardener course she teaches for CSU Extension.

Jean Van Pelt, conservation outreach coordinator for Southeastern Colorado Water Conservancy District, said the district participates in the Plant Select program and now has a separate garden devoted to Plant Select in addition to its xeriscape demonstration garden. Overall ratings for July 2000 to December 2004 were excellent for 14 of the 28 Plant Select plants growing in the district garden, poor for four of them, and the rest were judged to be good or fair. "Most do pretty well," Van Pelt said. "If not, we tell them why (in the evaluation) and give the reason; for example, if they were grown in bark mulch and got too much water."

The Southeast District office at the corner of United and Reyes in the Airport Industrial Park has pamphlets about Plant Select and Van Pelt mentions it in outreach programs she gives on xeriscape gardening. The district's demonstration garden is planted around the building and is open to the public. Plant Select plants are identified as such in addition to their botanical names.

The plants featured in the program are good choices for this area, Van Pelt said, "because they are adapted to our climate. The temperatures here can fluctuate greatly, as we've seen recently. They also are adapted for our soil, our intense sunlight, our elevation. They've been tried and tested in demonstration gardens around the state. And they have a nice appearance."

The Gardeners of Pueblo West have dedicated a section of their xeriscape demonstration garden to Plant Select choices. They won't be planting this year's selections, though, because they're in the process of moving the garden to Cattail Crossings park from the water treatment plant.

Ruth Sterkel of The Gardeners said they've been pleased with their Plant Select plants.

"The shrubs are wonderful. They've thrived and bloomed and done what they were supposed to. All the perennials have done quite well. Coral Canyon twinspur (Diascia integerrima) is just beautiful. It blooms for a long time and has pink blooms. The Princess Kay plum (Prunus nigia) was good the first year but the second year it got aphids and we've been battling them ever since."

Sterkel said The Gardeners don't plant all the selections each year because their funds are limited and because not all the Plant Select choices are xeric.

"Each year, we pick good examples of xeric plants. At first, that part of the garden was a little bare, but it's filling in nicely."

Sterkel said plants with the Plant Select tags may be a little more expensive and sometimes are harder to find the first year they've gotten the designation.

"If you participate in the Plant Select program, you get the plants for free, but you have to do the monitoring (evaluations) in return, and we don't have the facilities for that," Sterkel said.

Diana Capen, co-owner of Perennial Favorites nursery near Rye, said the nursery carries about 20 Plant Select varieties, and grows some from cuttings and some from seed.

"We've tried to pick the ones that do well in Southern Colorado; some haven't done as well here," Capen said. "We have a couple of penstemons, some salvias, ground-cover veronicas that are very drought-tolerant, and from Pueblo to the mountains, the delospermas or ice plants - some are real cold-hardy and some are long-blooming."

Capen said a lot of people search for the distinctive Plant Select tags when they are shopping. "I can tell they have planted other Plant Select plants and are looking for more."

Perennial Favorites will be open to the public May 3 through the end of July. More information is available at the Web site www.perennial-favorites.com .

Gary Waye, owner-manager of Fox's Garden-Floral, 329 S. Santa Fe Ave. in Pueblo, said he will stock some of this year's Plant Select featured plants, but he isn't sure which ones.

Dave Woodward of Southwest Farms on U.S. 50 east of Pueblo is growing Plant Select perennials for the wholesale market, including some of the 2006 choices.

"A lot of people down here don't know about Plant Select," he said. "We grow and ship (to garden centers) up and down the Front Range."

A list of other nurseries and garden centers that carry Plant Select plants is available at the Web site www.plantselect.org .

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Copyright (c) 2006, The Pueblo Chieftain, Colo.

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Source: The Pueblo Chieftain

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