The purpose of this newsletter is to list our available one gallon containers. The following four pages of columns might give this intent away already. We do not want it to be a surprise. The alert reader may come to several conclusions after glancing at this list: one being that we have a lot of stuff to sell and another being that we, here at Twixwood, are energized, optimistic, and well-organized, thus being able to produce lots of stuff, the sine qua non of a wholesale nursery grower. An alternate conclusion might be that we are getting too old to make rational decisions on what to produce. We hope that you do not come to the last alternate conclusion, although, even if you do, look at the bright side; the more stuff we have the better able we are to fill your orders.
Some of the plant varieties were not put into the price list and the reason is because we were only recently informed of the demand for them; so we hustled up some stock plants last winter and took cuttings with great enthusiasm and wild abandon which is why we have 2500 gallons of Calamintha nepeta nepeta plus 8,000 heavy plugs standing by ready to up-shift. Maybe we were told that the market was more intense than it was. I am trying to remember who gave us this bit of information. Another new plant for us is Salvia Wesuwe, 2000 gallons and a really big stock bed for more cuttings. In the same vein we have 250 gallons of Achillea ‘Walther Funcke’. These several varieties are all being used in the Chicago area to plant quasi-natural, somewhat prairie-looking great expanses. I forget the name for it but it is not the Great American Gar- den. We do not voice an opinion about aesthetics here at Twixwood; we just grow what sells.
This reminds me of what I have been busy doing in the last two years since taking over active management. I have been doing what only the owner can really do—investing in planting large stock beds for digging and cutting beds for cuttings out in the field. Also I have been doing market research and believing everything that I have been told. And we have acquired new varieties and patent rights to propagate the patented ones.
From Brent at Intrinsic Perennial Gardens we got Veronica ‘Pure Silver’ (not patented) and Penstemon “Pochontas” PP#24,804, and coming on for next year the very nice unpatented Echinacea “Snow Cone”. You will note a good supply of Sedum “Pillow Talk” PPAF—a substantial plant with hybrid vigor. Many other Intrinsic selections are in the stock beds—information to follow this winter.
The Euonymous ‘vegetus’ 3000 gallons is listed as a groundcover although it works as a vine equally well. This is the really old round- leafed strain that hugs the ground. We do not offer the other upright strains—Sarcoxie and Green Lane, these of shrub-like habit and the oval elongated leaf.
The alert reader will notice that we have organized our listings this time by quantity as opposed to alphabetically, thus indicating, once again, a high level of optimism. The hope is that the reader will have to wade through every one of the plants listed on these four pages in order to find what they want with the concomitant possibility that they will get either reminded or tempted to purchase more plants.
Sometimes these availability numbers do not reflect our real availability as we have lots of heavy 3 ½” liners ready to pot up. That is why the 500 Geranium ‘Alpenglow’ is just a teaser and I notice that Geranium ‘Magnificum’ did not even make the list although we have a truckload of liners. We have not listed G. Magnificum heretofore and the algorithm that we use to plan production uses past sales as the determining factor. As soon as I can figure out how to pronounce the word ‘algorithm’ I will have a chat with the production planning committee and explain how the world works.
All of the gallons of groundcovers are kind of strange because most people just plant small plugs or pots of these and then watch them grow. The market appears to be geographic specific; mostly around Detroit. We are happy to do it because we always have plenty of left-over and thus over-grown small pots. The low quantities of Vinca minor ‘Emily Joy’, ‘Ralph Shugert’, ‘atropurpurea’, and ‘Miss Jekyll’ do not reflect the possibilities and I thought we had 40,000 Bowles; someone must have miscounted.
Likewise the 2000 Chasmanthium latifolium listing under-advertises the possibilities. This grass grows from seed and we have a big seed orchard of it and I did not want to waste any of that seed. And even more likewise, the 5000 Liriope spicata is an under-representation of our capability. We are digging and putting large clumps into the gallon pots, thus making up really fast.
Another new plant is the 1000 Persicaria ‘Firetail’, a wonderful late summer bloomer and I notice that the 200 Persicaria polymorpha did not make the cut. Last winter someone wanted a few of each of these plants and we had to dig them out of the frozen mud. Of course we dug the whole row and now they are for sale.