“We’re selling several million plants each year through this program,” says James Klett, CSU professor in the Department of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture in the College of Agricultural Sciences and coordinator for Plant Select, which is a registered trademark.
Panayoti Kelaidis, director of outreach for the Denver Botanic Gardens, adds, “It’s getting larger every year because of all the fantastic talent we have working in concert: wonderful research, marketing, coordination. A lot of talent is pulled together.”
The Plant Select “talent” looks for landscape plant material with outstanding ornamental appeal. But it’s more than just finding an interesting plant. The plants, which can come from anywhere in the world, must be adaptable to the Rocky Mountain region. They are selected from natural populations, cultivated seedling populations or unique landscape specimens. Candidate plants are grown at the Denver Botanic Gardens and CSU, then tested at demonstration sites throughout the region to determine suitability for the area. The plants are judged on propagation ease, cultural adaptability (soil, water, and temperature requirements), and ornamental usefulness. Plants that pass the test often are patented or trademarked, then propagated to provide stock for the nursery industry.
“The idea is to increase the diversity of commercially available plants,” Klett says. “We look for plants specifically for the Rocky Mountain area, but we’re finding they’re adaptable to other parts of the country.”
Plant Select in a World Market
Al Gerace, chief executive officer of Welby Gardens Company and spokesperson for the green industry, vouches for the marketability of the plants. “Plant Select is producing something for all aspects of the industry. It’s a real world market and a real integration of technology and knowledge. We have a large selection of plant material from all over the world that we can use to enrich our horticulture locally.”
Representatives of CSU and the Denver Botanic Gardens jointly administer the program, working with landscape and nursery professionals throughout the Rocky Mountain and Plains states. That’s what has made it successful, they all agree. “My skill is discovering wonderful new plants,” Kelaidis says. “But others are good at expansion and production - and marketing is a huge piece. Denver Botanic Gardens can do some marketing, but not to the extent of some of the other people in Plant Select who have the connections. It has been great having all these people coming together.”
A formal structure keeps it together, Klett says, explaining that three committees create the trunk of the Plant Select tree: an Advisory Committee, a Marketing Committee, and a Propagation Committee.
“The Propagation Committee is made up of plant propagation people,” Klett says. “The major focus is to seek out new plants and critically review them.” The next step is to determine the type of propagation - seeds, vegetative cuttings, tip shoots, tissue culture or small whips - and the growing techniques, he explains.
Then there’s the testing period. “We have to test for viability in this region. For woody plants, we need to test five to 10 years to make sure they are adaptable. For herbaceous, it’s a three- to five-year test. We make sure they can survive several winters so we know if they are true perennials for this area.”
Once plants take on the Plant Select label, the Marketing Committee steps in, Klett says. “The Marketing Committee gets photos, creates text for brochures and for plant tags, designs banners for garden centers and sends out press releases.”
Gerace says not all plants are equal in terms of promotion. “All of the plants have merit, but some are more difficult to market. We have had the most success with perennials that flower the first year. It’s more difficult to sell ones that don’t flower the first year. We also have more problems with woody plants, because it takes a couple of years to produce and they’re more expensive.”
Creating public awareness takes work, he says. “But we were able to create an image and product loyalty by drawing on the organizational integrity of the Denver Botanic Gardens and CSU’s academic excellence.”
The Marketing Committee also oversees the 45 to 50 demonstration gardens located throughout the state, Klett says. “The plants are labeled with the Plant Select tags and placed in a public area that’s open to the public most of the year. Once a year, representatives of the gardens attend a yearly meeting and show the Marketing Committee how the plants have performed.”
The third part of the structure, the Advisory Committee, meets once a month to review recommendations from the other two committees and to look at financial matters and other proprietary items such as patents or trademark names for plants.
Trademarks are filed for plants that are new to the area, that don’t have names, (Valley Lavender ™ Plains Verbena) or are underused plants (the Tanager ™ Gazania from South Africa).
A plant patent is filed for truly new plants. New plants have to be unique and able to be asexually propagated and have not been in commerce. Three new plants have been discovered under the shade of the Plant Select program: one from Welby Gardens in Denver, one from the Denver Botanic Gardens - a mutation that was asexually propagated - and one tree from Fort Collins Wholesale Nursery. Plant Select plants can only be propagated by members of Plant Select, Klett says.
Membership is a formal agreement renewable each year, Klett says. “Members agree to use the Plant Select logo and pay a royalty on each plant sold. Dues run from $200 to $500 a year depending on the size of the grower.” All money collected defrays the cost of the program.
Membership fees guarantee a higher standard of plant material and also the benefit of the marketing done by Plant Select, Klett says. Plant Select currently has 45 to 50 members nationwide, a far cry from the original five or six members in 1998.
The Seed of the Program
Plant Select started in the early 1980s. “It’s hard to put a specific date on it,” Klett says. “When I came to CSU in January of 1980 on an experiment station and teaching extension appointment, my research focus was to evaluate woody and herbaceous plants for the Rocky Mountain High Plains area. Denver Botanic Garden also had its horticulturist looking at better plants for the same area. So rather than trying to develop a program by myself, I pitched the idea of working together.”
The seed was planted, but the growth was slow. “We struggled,” he remembers. “We went through a lot of plant lists trying to decide which plants to promote. It never really got off the ground.”
Kelaidis became involved in the mid-1980s. “I was curator of the Denver Botanic Gardens rock alpine garden. I introduced, cultivated and distributed new plants that were very experimental. CSU was doing something similar, so rather than invent new wheels, the idea became, ‘Why not collaborate?’”
In the early 1990s, Klett and Kelaidis worked out a program plan. “It was still pretty much between CSU and the Denver Botanic Garden at that point. It wasn’t until 1994 that the Colorado green industry really got involved,” Klett says.
The green industry’s involvement added fertilizer to the seedling effort, Kelaidis says. “Plant Select had been lolling around for 10 years and hadn’t produced anything. Then Al Gerace stepped in. He’s a doer and a marketing whiz. He saw what the Denver Botanic Gardens and CSU were trying to do, and he saw an even bigger potential. He wanted to give both organizations credit for what they were doing and also provide a systematic access to the plants for people in the green industry.”
“Plant Select was formed but needed a connection to the market,” Gerace remembers. As a wholesaler and retailer, he could provide that connection to local propagators and growers as well as the national seed industry. He also lined up suppliers who could produce the Plant Select tags. “We’d been sharing for the better part of 40 years, so it was very fertile ground for us,” he says, referring to the response from the growers, retailers, wholesalers and, in later years, nurserymen.
In the spring of 1997, the first official brochure was created, featuring five plants, Klett says. “At that time, we had just a couple of grower members. Denver Botanic Gardens helped with the initial cost and we got a grant to help us get the brochures printed and the labels.”
The program that started with a sprout of an idea has blossomed. “The program continues to grow,” Klett says. “There are more members and more consumers planting our plants. We have growers on both the east and west coasts.
“The plants sell themselves if they’re good plants. And people are always looking for new plants.”
The Plantselect.org Web site lists retail members where plants can be purchased for home use. “Just ask for Plant Select,” he says. “You can’t go wrong.”
This article by Kay Rios was originally published in the 2006-2007 calendar published by the Office of the Vice President for Research. For a more stories about research at the university, visit the Web at vpr.colostate.edu or call Marty Welsch at 491-4036
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