Open House: We had great weather for our two open house dates (June 19-20, 2013) and a great turn out for both our events.
Wednesday was focused on consumer understanding organized by our Marketing department and led by market research expert Kip Creel (http://www.standpointgroup.com/key-personnel.php). Consumers reviewed all the plants in the trial garden and told us what their favorites were and why (from over 942 choices, quite a task!). This was a great day and we learned a lot about on how people select plants.
Thursday was our day in the sun for the Southern Garden Tour (www.southerngardentour.com). We had a great turn out from all the major plant breeding companies. I spent the day with the enviable task of reviewing with the breeding companies the plants we have in our "Secret Garden". The "Secret Garden" is off limits to the public and where over 700 new and improved plants are being tested under southern garden conditions. These are the plants that will eventually make it for sale if they can pass our testing . All I can say (right now being sworn to secrecy) is that are a lot of great plants coming in the future!
Beauty Yellow Argyranthemum. Beauty Yellow Argyranthemum is a great example of why we do the testing we do. The current Argyranthemum we are growing is call Flutterby Yellow and is a great plant. We chose Flutterby two years ago after two years of testing in the garden where is consistently did much much better than other Argyranthemums. Beauty Yellow has the advantage in that it is easier for the greenhouse grower to produce. However we never tested it in the garden. The good news is that Beauty Yellow is doing better than Flutterby in the garden. Even better news was our Wednesday focus group picked Beauty Yellow over Flutteryby due to its better habit and more flowers.
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