Solomon was a great king, but not a gardener. It turns out that, after all, there is an infinitude of new things under the sun. This is the essence of innovation and evolution, and the antithesis of tradition and the status quo. Thus, Darwin was, perhaps, the truest of all prophets. While I’ll never stand in the company of Darwin, much less Solomon, I’d be quite comfortable with—of all people—the newest investor in The New York Times and Mexico’s richest man, Carlos Slim Helú. In fact, he quotes what I would call “Burpee scripture”:

Normally an excellent wordsmith, President Obama would do well to take a page from the gospel of Slim Helú and think “seed” rather than “stimulus”. Darwin escaped the mechanistic “stimulus and response” world of early 19th century science for the coastal islands of South America. In that laboratory—the vast unexplored horizons of the New World—there were no scientific orthodoxies, bloodless political or economic philosophies, and endless “zero-sum games” of give and take. There was only regeneration, rebirth, genetic flow and evolutionary flourish. Duplicate dollars make no more sense—or growth—than duplicate genes. Let the financial dinosaurs go extinct, and let the economic chips fall.

For example, a “survivor” seed grows from a 1-inch nut to a 50-foot tree. Thus, in the successful home garden, one corn seed becomes 1,000 more; a tiny speck turns into 35 pounds of tomatoes. Therefore, utilizing Burpee’s new Money Garden, one dollar becomes 25, given a bit of humus, a spot of compost, a dozen hours of tending and two months of sunshine—a drop in the hole in the bucket of our recent economic history. Is not “seed” a worthy paradigm?

The word stimulus fails to stimulate. To the extent it conjures any image whatever, one envisions a god-like doctor delivering a jolt of stimulus to a comatose patient, eliciting the odd spasmodic jerk. If unresponsive, the latter is pronounced dead. This is entirely the wrong metaphor for the dynamics of the economy. Hardly an inert body, our economy is in fact a complex ecosystem—a garden, if you will—of sellers, buyers, investors, borrowers, lenders, winners, losers, supply and demand.

Far from mere cause/effect or “stimulus/response”, the economy is the epitome of “interactive”, as is the garden. Invest for growth doesn’t mean “stimulate”—rather, it means “seed” and “feed”; “tend” and “train” into fruition and harvest. Mr. Obama and his advisers are not, I suspect, gardeners, and, perhaps, fail therefore to grasp either the metaphor or the reality of what is meant by growth in business or markets.

A gardener isn’t a doctor, just as seed isn’t stimuli. Rather, we the people are, all of us, sunlight. All we need are the seeds of knowledge and education, the nutrients of technology, time and patient attention to detail, and the gardens of our labor will grow, ripen and bear much fruit. Instant gratification doesn’t gratify, and the stimulus doesn’t stimulate. On the other hand, seeds—in reality and metaphor—are the beginning as well as the end, the alpha and omega, a link between the past and the future.

Should the President adopt a “seed” metaphor, he needs to remember not to “sow from the center”. Gardens are like the communities of America—not a European style, monocultural monarchy of cultivars, but a broad diversity of geography, climate, customs and ethnicities. Our US gardens are more Noah’s Ark than Eden; more backyard garden than White House garden. As opposed to the Education or Health and Human Services departments—with their feckless efforts to instill or “stimulate” best practices—the new administration must first identify the proper plants for each zone, so to speak. In the garden you need to be close to the ground. To do that, talk to the local gardeners, to avoid the timeless scenario of the cagey farmer who outfoxes the sophisticated city slicker. Fertilize Main Street, not Wall Street.

Once he opens the gate of the American garden, the President might, like Carlos Slim Helù, discover something “new under the sun,” and an innovative economy shall become fruitful and multiply.

Folks have asked, “How can I mix annuals, perennials, vegetables and herbs together in one space?”  The answer depends on your zone, the time of year you wish to enjoy your garden and the particular plants you prefer.  The secret is spacing things out so you can reach in and harvest the vegetables and herbs without disturbing the showy annuals and herbaceous perennials.  Shrubs take care of themselves, and you only need to mind their position and spacing so the taller ones don’t block the sun from the shorter plants.

This careful space allocation process is the essence of garden design.  A potager is a classic form of small, mixed-use vegetable plots. Well-edged, they blend nicely with perennials and annuals, depending on your taste.  The lambs lie down with the lions, so to speak. Play around. Here is a cool climate/season plan, recommended by Heronswood’s Research Director Grace Romero and horticulturist Bill Rein.  We’ll post midsummer and late summer/early fall in parts 2 and 3.

I find it surprising when it’s said that people lost their money with Bernard Madoff.  Bernie Madoff didn’t lose their money—to do that he would have had to invest it—he found their money.  There’s a big difference.

It gets me thinking about Belgian dentists.  Belgian dentists?  Investment bankers have long used Belgian dentists as the ultimate test of a corporate bond offering.  The belief is that of all investors the Belgian dentist is the most prudent.  He or she will only invest if the terms are right, the bond issuer of stainless repute and the rating triple A.  We can assume that, for the Belgian dentist, taking a flier with the likes of Bernard Madoff would have all the allure of a rotten incisor.

Where does the prudent investor look today?  We pull up our computer screens and gaze at our portfolios with ever-increasing dismay.  Guided by our broker or investment counselor, we’ve parlayed our investments in the prescribed ways.  We’ve dutifully divvied up our stocks among consumer goods, industrials, utilities, high tech, transportation, blue chip and growth stocks; we have the requisite investments in index funds, government bonds and real estate.  And you know what?  It all looks like a rifled drawer.

So you’re asking yourself:  Where is the smart money going today?  Where do we look for yields?  Where is the high-growth?  The answer is close at hand:  right in your own backyard, in fact.

Here is an investment sector that you can actually understand, and which produces tangible results—results you can sink your teeth into—offering rewards that will put food on your table and a smile on your face.  Not to tilt at windmills, but investments don’t come any greener than this.

A backyard garden of modest size can deliver a return on investment that is exceptional by any standard—ranging right up to 20,000 percent.  Here is an elephantine return that dwarfs the lilliputian 18 percent or so promised by Bernie Madoff, and it’s the real deal.  It doesn’t get any more real, in fact.  Nor more helpful for a family of four.

The numbers speak for themselves.  For starters, let’s talk tomatoes.

A single tomato plant will, over the course of the summer, yield up to 40 medium to large fruit.  Your local supermarket is now selling tomatoes for 75 cents to a dollar each, so figure your single tomato plant’s yield, in dollar terms, is 30 dollars to 40 dollars per season.

A seed packet contains, say 25 guaranteed seeds out of 30 total.  Place the average at 35 dollars, multiply it times 25, and you get eight hundred seventy five dollars worth of store bought tomatoes from a seed packet that retails for 3 to 4 dollars.  Your return on investment?  Better than 200 to 1 or 20,000 percent.

The skeptic—and who isn’t these days?—has questions.  What about the money I spend on fertilizer?  What if tomatoes are on sale this week?  You’re still looking at an incredible level of savings.  If tomatoes go on sale for 50 cents each, your return on your investment dollar ratio is still 1:125 or 12,500%.  And not only do you reap the financial reward, you can sauté, it, roast it, or eat it raw.  Try doing that with a share of Lehman Brothers.  (No, don’t.)

Keep this in mind:  these are succulent, juicy, fragrant just-picked tomatoes worthy of a gourmet—light-years away from those forlorn, flavorless tomato wannabees you see in your grocer’s produce department.

Another high-growth sector:  peas.  Still skeptical?  All we are saying is:  Give peas a chance.

Here we go.  A single Sugar Snap Pea plant should yield at least a pound of peas per season, equal to 90 to 100 pods.  Buy them at the supermarket and you pay $3.50 to $4.00 a pound, or $3.75 a pound on average.

A packet of 150 snap pea seeds retails for around $1.50, or a penny a seed.  However, they get “thinned” by 2/3, so we’re talking 50 vines for 3 cents apiece.  Fifty vines yield fifty pounds of peas that would set you back $3.75 a pound at your grocer.  So, a $1.50 packet of seed yields $187.50 worth of sugar snap peas.  Allowing for fencing, the bottom line is an ROI of better than 100 to one.

Are you a bean-counter?  Green snap beans yield a return of 1:90, or 1:80, depending on the bean.  Haricot verts, on the other hand, deliver a return of merely 40 to 1.  We’ll say it again:  we’re talking a 40 to 1 return.

Conservative investor, looking for real and tangible returns?  Grow your assets at home.  Speculative investor, looking for a big payday?  Doff your pinstripes, slip into your jeans, and get into your garden.  Think of seeds as God’s microchip, and this is the ultimate tech stock.  Green investor, looking to both make money and save the planet?  Hop into your Birkenstocks, and join Mother Nature in the tomato patch.

Which brings us back to the Belgian dentist, that paragon of investing prudence.  What do you think Belgian dentists are investing in today?  We don’t have the slightest idea.  But we’ll hazard a guess though.  Two words:  Brussels Sprouts.

A hot topic recently was the First Pooch. The media roiled with speculation: what kind of dog would the President-elect’s family choose? The President-to-be told the press that the family dog would likely come from an animal shelter, adding, “It will probably be a mutt—like me.”

To some, calling oneself a “mutt” smacks of self-deprecation. It shouldn’t. Being a mutt, genetically speaking, is a badge of honor. Whether, like the President, you come from a mixed race parentage, or are of differing ethnicities, you are a hybrid—and being a hybrid has its privileges.

As a veteran plant breeder, I am well acquainted with hybrid vigor, the naturally occurring genetic enhancement achieved by combining the unique virtues of diverse parents in the offspring. The resulting hybrid’s superiority comes from the repression of recessive traits from one parent by the dominant traits from the other—the best of both worlds.

Of course, every hybrid does not have a triumphant result. The actress Sarah Bernhardt once mused to George Bernard Shaw, “Imagine we had a child, and it had my looks and your brain.” Shaw replied, “Yes, but imagine if it had your brain and my looks.”

And yes, not all purebreds are high-strung, thin-blooded and Velcro for every passing virus. If you are an AKC champion whippet, or a WASP who proudly traces your lineage to the Magna Carta, I salute you.

 “Te salud, Don Corleone.”

                                                                                               (Though to the WASP I’d point out that Anglo-Saxon is itself a hybrid, Protestantism a Teutonic variant of Catholicism, and whiteness a genetic variation as well, one suitable for northern climes with relatively little sunlight.)

The phenomenon of hybrid vigor (heterosis is the technical term) is a key factor in all plant and animal breeding—whether you’re talking tulips or thoroughbred racehorses. It’s vital. As management seer Peter Drucker notes, “Few knowledge-based innovations in this century [20th] have benefited humanity more than the hybridization of seeds and livestock.”

However, the President is not merely a hybrid. Recombinant thinking is reflected in his domestic politics, foreign policy and management style. For his cabinet, he has assembled a group of strong personalities with diverse outlooks, including three Republicans, often compared to President Lincoln’s “team of rivals.” During the presidential primary, he invoked Ronald Reagan as a Presidential role model, drawing the wrath of his Democratic opponents and party diehards. In foreign affairs, he consistently emphasizes dialogue, even with countries that oppose us.

No president in memory has so emphatically endorsed looking beyond ideology and party labels in crafting policy, surprising both his supporters and his detractors. Asking Megachurch pastor Rick Warren to give the opening prayer at his inauguration is a striking example.

In my opinion, the President clearly grasps the importance of combining—or crossing, to use the genetic term—disparate ideas and ideologies.  He’s not merely thinking strategically, but indeed bespeaking the essence of evolution and creativity.  I pray that he’s as competent as he seems.

Researchers into the nature of creativity find that the ability to combine and recombine seemingly unrelated elements is the magic that makes 1 + 1 = 3.

Hybridism is an indispensable catalyst in the arts, ideas and sciences. You can likely trace all innovations to the merger of two contrasting, or even opposing ideas. Where you see a new paradigm, conceptual breakthrough or creative revolution, the 1 + 1 = 3 equation is at work.

In the chemistry of human attraction, we often see the attraction of opposites. Plato called it “the desire and pursuit of the whole.” We seek the person who will, in a sense, complement and complete us. Hybridism runs through our collective unconscious as well. In mythology we see creatures that unite traits of different animals: the griffon (with the head and wings of an eagle and a lion’s body), the centaur (a horse with a human body, legs and arms) and the faun (a human with a goat’s ears, legs and tail).

In technology, Drucker sees hybrid knowledge in the development of hybrid corn—the convergence of the work of Michigan plant breeder William J. Beal, who discovered hybrid vigor in the 1880s, and the rediscovery of Gregor Mendel’s genetics by the Dutch biologist Hugo de Vries. The Wright Brothers’ airplane represents the cross-linking of the gasoline engine and mathematical aerodynamics. That ubiquitous thing we call “mass communications” is a hybrid of information and advertising brought about by the likes of newspaper barons William Randolph Hearst, Joseph Pulitzer and Adolf Ochs. Today these convergences seem altogether inevitable and inextricable.

The arts is a garden overflowing with striking hybrids, where two dissimilar ingredients are fused to spectacular and enduring effect. The results don’t appear anomalous, but predestined: not an end, but a new beginning. Their bloom does not fade.

Picasso mated primitive African art to modern art; Stravinsky crossbred Russian folk dances with western classical music. Taking a cue from the philosopher Henri Bergson, Virginia Woolf merged stream-of-consciousness into dazzling fiction. Oscar Wilde married oriental paradox to the drawing-room comedy. The poet Ezra Pound was a cross-breeder of styles par excellence, drawing on everything from Provencal ballads to Chinese poetry.

I look forward to seeing the results of the President’s many ideological out-crossings.  I wish him success.  And I can’t wait to see the first mutt.  I’ll bet it’s a beauty.

Much has been written about a “White House garden” even to the absurd extent of tearing up the front lawn and planting vegetables and herbs—a giant kitchen garden.  Ghastly.  While I sympathize with the proponents, I disagree with their tactics, as well as over zealousness.  In short, they’re not thinking like gardeners.

If they wish for a “garden agenda” to be high on President Obama’s list of priorities, they should start with an evaluation of the status quo.  The White House is, first and foremost, a fish bowl.  No one is going to roll up his sleeves and “return to the land” on that piece of real estate.  Also, First Lady Laura Bush had a rooftop vegetable garden (she’s a big gardener).  The Obamas would do well to keep it going and learn from the chef or whoever else helped Laura tend it.

The second phase of a realistic garden agenda would be to focus on Camp David.  I predict Obama will spend much time there.  It’s got several nice spots where he can be alone and work out his gardening likes, dislikes, solutions, techniques, etc., in private, as the rest of us do when we start out.

Gardens—and especially vegetable plots—are practiced in solitude and peace, as well as private.  I remember making mistakes as a kid and thanking the Lord that no one could see them.  Vegetable gardens are a bit like car garage fix-it spaces.  You work on that old baby inside until she’s ready to be seen.  Maybe.  I have friends who work on their cars out front, but they’re living in rural areas, where “front” has very little meaning.

Actually a fishing camp, Camp David probably has rocky soil, so amending it would be the first project.  Then, in a sunny spot, he and Mrs. Obama could cultivate a small patch at first, especially so the daughters may enjoy it. By 2010, a larger garden would evolve. Soon it would supplement weekend meals for not only the first family but also the entourage, visitors and staff.

The development of a Camp David garden would generate the sort of “buy in” a White House garden would never do.  Then, during 2011 or 2012 an appropriate design could be made and a family garden installed at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.  It would be a natural extension of what they learned at Camp David.  Not only would the photo op be more timely (he has enough to think about now) but the whole project would be more authentic. 

Having already created a garden at Camp David (“Michelle’s Garden”?), the President and his family would now, with the White House garden, be sharing their enthusiasm with the public.

I’d encourage the President to take this low-key approach.  The nation’s gardeners wish him well.

Here’s a set piece, so to speak, written for the newspapers.  The title refers to Alvin Toffler’s Future Shock, a fashionable book in my college years, and is a pun suggested by my friend, Fayette Hickox.  It was about the coming drastic changes wrought by the technological advances of the 60s, and had an apocalyptic quality to it.  However, it seemed to me alarmist—everything was “special”—which, of course, results in nothing being special.

“FUTURE CHIC”

The future is a bit inscrutable.  If we look at it up close, it has a way of becoming the present, and whizzing right past us like a kid on a skateboard.

Standing back, trying to get a broader view, we seem to be staring at a blank slate.  And a very large blank slate the future is, stretching into infinity in silence.  It doesn’t give up its secrets, nor invite us in.  We can’t even get on the guest list.  The future is like Greta Garbo, telling us, in effect, “I vant to be alone”.

The past is another matter.  If the future is Garbo, the past is Britney Spears.  Scenes from history dangle before us vividly, like baubles on a charm bracelet.

(Garbo—now she was special.  She didn’t seduce or even radiate so much as propagate light with a beauty more dazzling than the sun.  We sat in the movie theaters and grew the fungal plants that inhabit the souls of movie audiences.)

Archaic scenes unfold before us as if projected by a magic lantern.  Over here the pyramids, currently under construction; knights, in shining armor, prepare to joust; Columbus sailing the ocean blue; Marie Antoinette as a milkmaid; Saint Francis preaching to a congregation of animals; a caveman rubbing together sticks to create fire; a Chinese Empress with her coterie of eunuchs.  The past is an endless spectacle; the future doesn’t offer so much as a postcard.

Such visions of the future we can conjure are a pastiche of Jules Verne, Brave New World, “Bladerunner” and the Jetsons—picturesque but scarcely a roadmap of the not-yet. It seems that we should be able to think our way into the future.  After all, what’s the difference between the past and the future, other than this moment? “It’s an odd sort of memory that only looks backward,” says Lewis Carroll’s Alice.

The poor visibility afforded by the future is no barrier to the prophets among us.  Using a set of tools that includes stars, birds’ entrails, dreams, crystal balls, tea leaves and divine confidences, these seers have a backstage pass into the sanctum of the future.  They turn the question mark of the future into a gaudy chorus line of exclamation marks!!!

Prophets of today foresee a grim tomorrow.  Their visions are anything but paradisiacal.  They see the future not as a promising beginning but an ignoble end.  Dark, apocalyptic visions have never had it so good.  As at a cosmic buffet, you can select the end of the world that is most to your taste.  However, to bring out its full flavor, sprinkle with a grain of salt.

Today’s apocalyse menu includes a meteorite obliterating the planet, nuclear disaster, holy war, total economic collapse, global warming and the Rapture.

The psychics, preachers and gurus who make these prognostications always find a ready flock of believers, their bags packed and ready for doomsday.

One can see the appeal for the Doomsday Believers.  With a single stroke you can bundle all of life’s perils and uncertainties into a single oblivious package.  Call it “doubt consolidation”:

The flipside of the Apocalypse is … Paradise.  In this case, the future is immortality—an “everlasting” garden where no one hungers.  Whether Arcadia, Elysium, Utopia or Eden, paradises are invariably portrayed as vegetable gardens and pastures filled with game.  Apocalypses are primarily famines.  Get food right, and you’ve got at least “Paradise and Lunch”, as Ry Cooder nicely puts it.

Have no fear, dear readers, these apocalyptic visions too shall pass.  Armageddons come and go.  Meanwhile, you can find us in the paradise that is our garden.

The end of the world has a bright future.  I think I see it growing now.

I heard Apple’s co-founder Steve Wozniak talk about research a few days ago.  In the anxiety surrounding the retirement of Steve Jobs, he responded to the reporter’s query about the possible uncertainties of new product timelines:

“Oh, everyone at Apple works very far in advance—way into the future—like 1 to 1½ years!”

Apparently, agriculture and horticulture are rocket science compared to software research.  In fact, animal and plant breeders may have been the very first scientific researchers.

“We need more docile cows that won’t run away—can we breed them for shorter legs?”

“Whoa—it’s freezing!  We need sheep with longer rather than shorter hair—where are those really ugly long-hairs?”

Imagine the first food testers.  “Oops, it looks like that berry is fatal.  What about the one over there?”  They probably used animals first, or so one would hope.  Probably the long-legged and shorthaired ones.

Hybridization—the selective breeding of plants and animals for desirable traits—is mankind’s original, pre-manufacturing creative act.  The mere process of choosing one group of plants over another—by replanting the seeds from one group, thus enabling it to thrive over the other—results in these new plants becoming a distinct “breed” or domesticated race.  No factory required.  New age gurus like Paul Hawken and Bill McDonough are neither “new” nor especially guru-like.  The ancient remains the avant-garde.

It’s astonishing to consider how long plant breeding takes, compared to the freeze-dried, instantly prepared, wizardly hi-tech creations of today.  On the one hand, changes and variations occur quickly in plants, considering that they are natural phenomena.  Change is built in, like a mechanical spring.  Yet the annual cycle dominates breeding in the temperate zones.  Thus, most genetic research takes many years, depending on the genus as well as the breeder’s ability.  I know a cherry breeder who is scheduled to release later in her career a new cultivar that her PhD adviser began working on when he was her age—over 60 years for a single new introduction from two of the world’s best cherry breeders.

A new pot cyclamen averages 10 years of constant attention, while the tuberous-rooted begonia takes about 12 years.  On the more optimistic end, an experimental pansy breeder can introduce a new cultivar in about 3 to 4 years.  Tomatoes average 4 to 5 years, bell peppers 5 to 6 years and cucumbers and squash 7 to 8 years.  Our recent Hellebores took 13 years—from the first selections in 1993 to the introductions in 2006.  (Yet, consider how inexpensive flowers and vegetables are.)

Therefore, most, if not all, breeding companies try to cut these expensive product development cycles in half by using nurseries in the southern hemisphere to double up generations per year.  They “grow out” selections every six instead of twelve months—and spend a lot of time flying back and forth to Peru, Chile, South Africa, Southeast Asia, Australia and New Zealand.

So when Mr. Wozniak assured reporters that Apple would likely sail smoothly with 1-2 year new product development horizons, he reminded me of the profound genius and patience that go into plant breeding.  Perhaps the hi-tech folks could learn from the horticultural sciences.

Three years ago this spring I wrote an op/ed piece for the New York Times (my third) about the then raging “natives versus exotics” controversy. They called it “Border Wars” and it contained a typo (8,000 versus 12,000 years ago for the recession of the last glaciers, due to my confusion over BC and AD).  Otherwise, it was nearly flawless.  However, I received a bit of negative mail.  Some in the media got contentious—but I still think I was generally correct.

Anyway, it was great fun to engage the purists—the majority being academics—in a debate, even if it was from behind notebooks, keypads and office desks.  I hope one day to have an exchange with these folks in public.  Maybe even in a garden.

Also, thanks to Francois Korn at Seed Quest for publishing the follow-up piece in June, 2006, after the barrage subsided. 

By the way, does anyone else feel like spring of 2006 was a decade ago?

BORDER WAR

The horticultural world is having its own debate over immigration, with some environmentalists warning about the dangers of so-called exotic plants from other countries and continents “invading” American gardens. These botanical xenophobes say that a pristine natural state exists in our yards and that to disturb it is both sinful and calamitous.  In their view, exotic plants will swallow your garden, your neighbors’ gardens and your neighbors’ neighbors’ gardens until the ecosystem collapses under their rampant suffocating growth.

If anything suffocates us, though it will be the environmentalists’ narrow-mindedness.  Like all utopian visions, their dream beckons us into a perfect and rational natural world where nothing ever changes—a world that never existed and never will.

Native plants are the survivalists of the botanical world and in their appropriate settings—wilderness areas, home and botanical gardens, public parks and sidewalks—they bless us with their beauty and awe us with their tenacity.  Our lives would be poor and grim without the strawberry, cranberry, columbine and trillium.  They’ve always been here, in the same way that Native Americans have been; only their arrival and settlement are more ancient.

Their presence illustrates a geologic time, about 12,000 years ago when the last glaciers receded and unimaginable vast deluges swallowed the surface of the future United States—an airplane ride over the Midwest reveals enormous lakes formed by even larger melted ice masses.  As the landscape changed, the botanical world sorted itself out, leaving us with the hardy “natives”.  (It should be noted, though, that many plants now  considered natives—like sycamores, magnolias and cinnamon—arrived from other continents, just as we did.  They are products of adaptation.)

Like human survivalists, natives are also subject to exploitation by the horticultural equivalent of radical fundamentalists.  The anti-exotics argue that gardens should be populated exclusively by native plants, as if the exotics were trying to enter the flowerbed illegally.  The consequences of such a stand could be dire.  Should we eat no onions or garlic, apples or lemons; feast our eyes on no magnificent tulips or roses—all exotics of Eurasian origin?  Should Asians not enjoy their distinctive peppers, tomatoes, beans, squash, sunflowers and corn—all from the Americas?

Indeed, the world’s most popular root crop, potatoes, started life as a staple of the Andean people and achieved its first international fame as a slave food.  By the time it reached France, the “earth apple” was a delicacy likened to truffles; their flowers were featured in tiaras of court ladies.  Exotic indeed.

Should we deprive ourselves of petunias, begonias, impatiens and hollyhocks—not a one of them “native”?  Must we, on pain of being cast out of the garden as horticultural pariahs, deny the elephant his peanuts?  This wouldn’t be merely ridiculous.  It would compare with the denial of human immigration on grounds that certain ethnic groups breed in numbers “too prolific” for the existing elite to tolerate.  Imagine, then, a horticultural ruling class.  No “invasives” need apply; let the lily find another valley.  Such stupid prohibitions of exotic plant species demonstrate only an elitist snobbery that is as dangerous to a free society as it is to a free botany.

No one, and certainly no gardener, grows truly destructive invasive plants in his garden.  The devastating kudzu in the South, star thistle in the West and purple loosestrife in the East were accidental introductions from Asia, most often mixed with the feed and bedding of livestock.  Yet the pro-native, anti-exotic partisans also wish us to stop enjoying the charms of harmless and beautiful plants like Queen Anne’s lace, yarrow, and chicory.  Aside from requiring a bit of weeding, exotics are safe as milk, unless one considers gardening a chore rather than a passionate hobby.  If so, forget the forget-me-nots.

Let’s welcome, as spring arrives tomorrow, as many “huddled masses” of flowers, herbs and vegetables as can fit in our unique melting pot of a nation, unrivaled in its tradition of lush diversity and freedom to grow rampantly.

 
THE NEW YORK TIMES                                      March 19, 2006

NO PLANT LEFT BEHIND

Editorial by George Ball, Chairman and CEO, W. Atlee Burpee & Co.

After taking up the controversial subject of natives versus exotic or “invasive” garden plants in the New York Times Op/Ed pages (see summary below), I learned that although most people agreed, those who didn’t were dissenters who waged a war of personal attacks and threats of embargo on my company.  Missing was any mention, much less refutation, of the facts.  It was as if I violated a taboo.  Not true.  And I certainly did not advocate growing kudzu in one’s garden, as some suggested.  In fact, I pointed out kudzu’s destructive nature in order to distinguish such truly menacing invasives from those that are, as I said, “safe as milk”.  Indeed, someone please cite for me the destruction wrought upon our nation by the dandelion, our most common invasive garden weed, brought to our shores from Asia.  Also, please share it with the hundreds of dandelion farmers in the U.S.

To reiterate, the earth is not a super model; no healthy, vital landscape that includes our dynamic human presence can tolerate the horticultural plastic surgery and botanical bulimia advocated by the gardening extremists, who’ve been seduced by the ideology of “Native Plants Only”.  Again, I suggest that extremism, in the direction either of “pristinism” on the one hand or of unkempt, chaotic gardens and overrun, broken-caged landscapes on the other, is wrong.  Simply stated, the dangers, both real and perceived, of invasives and exotics have been harmfully exaggerated, as have the virtues of natives.  The gardening public should be informed—not proselytized.  Science and scientific opinion in the service of ideology is no science at all, as in the case of Lysenko and his theory of inherited skills, so favored by Stalin.  Far from stinging, Swiftian satire, my proposal, however modest, meant to be playful as well as provocative—a romp rather than a grim-faced, frontal assault on the ornamental “true believers”, hysterically blinded by the sight of too many petunias, morning glories, salvias and impatiens.

With rare exceptions, such as Luther Burbank and L.H. Bailey, America has long suffered a lack of horticultural imagination.  We are a “can do” nation, puritanically oriented away from pleasure gardens.  Recently, on his new TV show, ex-Disney boss Mike Eisner announced, “Type A’s cannot do gardening”.  (He wants yet another by-pass—the new status symbol.)  When we want beautiful gardens, we pay a fee to see them in magic kingdoms, grown in neat rows by immigrant labor.  Heaven forbid we ever actually touch a plant.  Therefore, it’s not surprising that our gardening industry leaders turn, like sunflower heads, to the UK and the Continent and, lately Japan where the fortunate inhabitants bask in the colorful glow of hybridized exotics.  For well over a hundred years, some of America’s prettiest natives have been “discovered” by Europeans and Japanese, hybridized in their adopted homes and reintroduced to us.  Why? Mainly because the citizens of these nations are better educated and, therefore, less politicized about plants.  They have the creativity to appreciate the entire spectrum of botany, not just what their professors and environmental pundits tell them.  Free from such influences, they enjoy the simple virtues of the strong colors, forms and textures found in the many plants of our fabulous, robust country—both wild and tame.

I wish only for our nation’s tent—and garden—to be big.  Many of my critics, especially those in higher education, desire a small seldom-visited, state-supported garden where they can control events, set the agenda and manage the debate.  As in M. Night Shamalyan’s recent, ‘The Village’, a false mythology and religion must keep the citizens in line and trapped in a small and shallow world.  Outside the lonely campuses with their ivory towered gardens, the rest of us enjoy a free and beautiful country.

SEED QUEST                                                   June, 2006

Thanks one and all for the thoughtful feedback about Space Genie.  It was meant to be light-hearted.  Please understand I shall not post readers’ mean-spirited attacks or dyspeptic rants. Sorry if I slightly missed the mark. I appreciate “true believers” and understand your passions. Maybe I’m a bit the same way. I was attempting humor, not advocating a “Bladerunner” world where someone might munch on his arm when he’s hungry.  However, I’ll try to refrain from too many off-the-wall articles.  Focus on the word “try”.  But first, please let me answer the critics as a group.

My short life has seen a revolution in the science as well as public perception of genes.  From the debates of “nature versus nurture” in the 60s and 70s to the Bell Curve to Craig Venter’s self-administered genome mapping to almost weekly developments today, the scene has dramatically changed.  Once genes were taboo in polite company.  Lyndon Johnson’s education experts stated that “all babies are born alike”, a bizarre notion that was widely approved.  Genetic-based differences were regarded with appropriate suspicion, as either counterrevolutionary or echoing 1930s racial theories.  The politics of equality and civil rights dominated scientific forums, and understandably so.

Just as naturally, opinions swung all the way back to such an extreme that by the 80s Richard Dawkins’ ludicrous “The Selfish Gene” became an international best seller.  Suddenly, no one was even similar, nor could we ever be.

Meanwhile, biology steamed ahead, leaving the sociologists on the scientific margins. Genes moved to the forefront at all levels.  Behavior studies and medicine joined animal and plant breeding as major focuses of genetic research.  Twin studies proliferated. The genes of an entire nation, Iceland, came under scrutiny.  Of course, plant and animal breeders—as well as parents—have been familiar with the influence of genes for thousands of years.  Also, traditional societies throughout the world intuitively grasp them.

Discoveries exploded in medical, zoological, agricultural and pharmaceutical worlds, illuminating the effects of genes, chromosomes and cytoplasm, including interactions, inhibitors, sequences and pathways. There is no stopping science. Of course, safety regulations are important.  I know quite a few folks in the industry, but  I know of no scientist or corporate executive who considers safety unimportant.

Throughout history we have had scientific medicines, domesticated animals, domesticated plants, races of humanity, races blended within humanity.  Cultures and civilizations have risen, flourished and collapsed.  Just where I was raised, there were the Clovis, the Mississippian, the Illiniwek, the French, British, and now us.  One can view them over time, and trace them on a map like a colony of algae.  The flow of genes has played a crucial role in all of them.

Consider world travel, one of the foundations of the horticulture industry.  From exploration of the Middle East, China, Africa, and India came countless herbs, spices and medicinal plants—virtually every grain and vegetable, as well as many beverages, consumed in Europe for a millennium—all from new genes.  Then, with the New World came yet another influx of major transformative crops, including corn, tarot root, tomatoes, cocoa, tobacco, winter squash, potatoes and peanuts.  More genes!

Each of these cultivars began life as an extraordinarily different plant in the wild.  What were the Chinese, Indians, Africans and Americans to do?  Leave the potatoes in the mountains, the corn in the fields, the eggplant, pepper, tarot and tomatoes in jungles?
Then, upon encountering these crops in indigenous markets, would the European explorers have been wise to toss them aside, as if of no importance?  Of course not.

So it is with laboratory discoveries of a plant’s behavior and potential for variation on a cellular level, and even more closely on a genetic level.  Shall we ignore a cost savings in terms of farmland needed to feed a nation, province or village? If a plant and a harvesting machine can be designed together and save backbreaking labor, shall we not pursue them?  Do farm workers wish for their children and grandchildren to work in the sun all day?

I assume that gene transfer technology will continue to make great progress, as it does now, with many regulations and safeguards in place.  Risk and reward need to be in balance.  If scientists can create a new form of rice that can cure an entire continent’s chronic blindness, they must take some risks.  Agriculture and medicine share many ethical and moral dilemmas, more each generation. Would starving people wish to make a distinction between an heirloom and a hybrid?

I feel little sympathy for extremists on either side. We at Heronswood, Burpee and The Cook’s Garden practice the art of plant breeding and trait selection, a traditional form of “genetic engineering”, helped only once over a 10,000 year history—by Gregor Mendel in the 1860s, an Austrian monk working out math problems using garden peas.  From his discoveries to Craig Venter’s “creative life forms”, there hasn’t been so much qualitative as quantitative change.  If folks are fearful of new types of species then I wonder what they must feel when they visit a pet store or garden center? Or how about at Wegman’s produce section? 
 
I remember at a Jewel Foodstore in Chicago in 1980, watching a white-bearded Polish immigrant—a watchcap on his head—almost faint with wonder as he lifted high a huge bunch of ‘Flame’, the first seedless red grape. His eyes saucered. He was fresh off the jet and a world away from the emptiness of Soviet era grocery stores.  I thought he was going to weep for joy.  The USSR brought plant biology and breeding to a standstill and kept it there for more than three generations.  Plant scientists were either executed or perished in the Gulag.  Such is the triumph of ideology over science

Nature is the revolutionary—science is merely its avant-garde.

My predecessor David Burpee opined toward the end of his life that he regretted only that he would not live to breed the plants of other planets with earth’s. Odd, but then he was a genius born in 1893 who was interviewing a newspaper reporter in the late 60s, still a hot time in the space race, when many folks in the US were confident that, eventually, extraterrestrial life would be found. As I noted last year, ET, or perhaps just a field of intergalactic ferns, may still be found. However, I shall not live to fulfill Mr. Burpee’s dream, much as I might wish. His casual observation expressed a profound understanding of agricultural genetics. Unfortunately, he didn’t live to see the fabulous promise of somatic embryogenesis—whereby substantial time and cost are reduced to improve crop plants—but he would have approved.

Nevertheless, my dreams aren’t as fanciful. I look forward to new cultivars resulting from genetic engineering—not space travel. I’d prefer new varieties that add unknown colors to gardens. Taupes, mauves, salmons (more salmons!), corals and, of course, pinks. A luminous shade of clear pink, with no grey or blue in it, is as mystical as any color you could have. And with new light will come new intensities, both high and low. Perhaps we shall see truly black flowers soon.

Yellows and blues could use help too. There’s already a great range of yellows, with corresponding emotional evocations, from lovingly warm to cheerfully cool. Widen it from blazing hot to almost freezing. Also, blue is a treasure box of subtlety and moodiness. My favorite is midnight blue which combined with lemon yellow is unforgettable. Twenty years ago Harris had a delightful multiflora petunia series, now long gone, called ‘Ribbons’. The dark blue and white striped, with the yellow, were stunning in a confetti-like mixed bed. Picnic time or evening repose, never a dull moment with ‘Ribbons’.

I suppose I’ll settle in for the remainder of my life with my own Forrest Gump box of chocolates here on earth. Other planets just may be more boring than earth. Nice to dream of them and of other suns, other spectra and other eyes, but I won’t oversleep. “You snooze, you lose”, as we say in business.

However, within reach of my lifetime are quantum leaps in gene transfer, which will usher in more of “les choses belles et etrangeres”, greatly to be desired. (However, I remember folks getting so upset in the 90s about Dolly the sheep, and wondering “Why the fuss?”) Plant/animal hybrids, animal/plant hybrids, animal/animal hybrids, plant/plant hybrids. Tiny little trees, 50 foot tall lilies of the valley. A tomato named “Porky”. A cow that grows its own grass. (Indeed, it was only a few hundred years ago that melons were thought to be the source of New World wild sheep.) Some advantages would be clear—plants could move about when they needed, in severe drought, for instance. Also, they would easily avoid inbreeding depression by choosing mates from other forests, since botanical eyes would eventually appear. Here comes Mr. Green Genes, indeed.

On the animal side, we humans could make our own food too, from time to time, or organ-by-organ, photosynthesizing from special areas of our limbs or head, or else via internal metabolizing like roots and bulbs do. Not so much “getting and spending we lay waste our powers”. Maybe Wordsworth was thinking of those little lambs popping out of the exotic melons, instead of daydreaming as his eyes floated across the bucolic green fields.