We discard varieties too soon.

Such was the sentiment of Geoff Needham, president of PlantHaven and a man I am pleased to call my friend. Geoff has been introducing new varieties for many years. In fact, his company was created to work with breeders to help promote and distribute their new crops.

Geoff can explain in detail the good things and the not-so-good things about the patent system, licensing and the status of plant breeders’ rights in America and Europe. In other words, he knows the mechanics of new crop introduction as well as anyone in this business, and I consider his comment quite telling.

Only two columns ago (“The New Plant Dilemma: Too Many Everythings,” April 2010), I wrote that there were too many crops in our business – too many cultivars of petunia and verbena and heuchera and too few consumers to sustain the rush toward more, more and more.

I stated that I understood why we as an industry felt we needed to have more. Perhaps I was just frustrated at having to learn another 50 new cultivars of calibrachoa again this season, as I had to do last season. There was just something not right. The industry was feeling like a Tokyo subway car at rush hour, with more and more varieties being squeezed in.

More New Equals Confusion

My comments about too many varieties were focused on the fact that too much “new” made the buying experience more confusing and difficult. Geoff’s comment, however, points out the logical consequence of too much “new” equaled too little “old.”

In a business now predicated on promotion and advertising dollars, it makes sense that those dollars aren’t going to be spent on something old. In our rush to cram in new cultivars, older ones have to go. This is logical, except that the definition of “old” means something very different to a breeding company compared to 99 percent of consumers, from retailer to gardener.

While we think anything more than two years is old, it usually takes twice that long for information about that new cultivars to get down to the user level. And by that time those cultivars are on the chopping block.

A new double bacopa may be really neat to those who bred it. But good grief, retailers are still trying to find creative ways to sell any bacopa.

Have you tried to find an old-fashioned purple coneflower lately? Those are the ones that everyone’s daughters are successful with, but while yellow, orange and strawberry coneflowers are everywhere, the purples are considered boring and don’t get the shelf space anymore.

I am by no means upset with the surge in new cultivars in the last 10 years. I revel in it – heck, I introduced a bunch of them myself. New crops are still the lifeblood of this industry. But we must be careful throwing out the wine before it’s time. Even though the consumer is probably the least important person in determining which plants are introduced, let’s give them a chance to learn about them before we stick something else in their faces.