Meet the Breeders: Altman Plants, Intrinsic Perennial Gardens
September 14, 2021 Intro/Editor’s Note: In the coming weeks, the team at Greenhouse Grower will present “Meet the Breeders,” a closer look at the people behind the plants. This week, you can learn more about Ping Lim at Altman Plants and Brent Horvath of Intrinsic Perennial Gardens.
Ping Lim, Director of Ornamental Plant Research, Altman Plants
Ping Lim’s lifelong mission is to create stunning roses that can be grown by anyone, anywhere, without harmful chemicals. The intent behind True Bloom Roses is to combine the best traits of hybrid tea roses with disease-resistant shrub roses. The roses are bred to thrive in all climates for easy care and excellent disease resistance while maintaining the beauty of a traditional rose flower — bigger, continuously blooming flowers featuring multiple layers of petals and fragrance with the healthy, vigorous, compact growth habit of a plant that grows on its own roots.
Roses are trialed extensively to ensure they can hold up and perform at a high level in a variety of conditions in climates from mild to cold, down to USDA Zone 4. Ping is constantly searching for genetic sources that can provide health, beauty, compact form, fragrance, and good hip setting and germination. Constantly tracking genetic trends to achieve and promote desired traits, working to boost root capacity of specimens, timing crops for optimal and effective pollination, and maintaining a consistent seed culture to ensure comparable measurements are all critical aspects of his and the team’s efforts.
Ping Lim
Throughout his career, Ping has valued seeing how his roses measure up to others, regularly having his hybrids participate in international competitions. His innovations have earned him many prestigious honors, including three All America Rose Selection (AARS) awards, 13 awards from the American Rose Trials for Sustainability (A.R.T.S.), 11 Portland’s Best Rose awards (Portland Rose Society), seven awards in Japan, and a 2021 Regional Choice Award from the American Garden Rose Selections (AGRS) organization.
It takes almost 10 years to produce a winner. The biggest challenge has been the time factor – the time required to develop a commercial rose breeding program from scratch. A program needs to combine art and science to create the beauty and efficiency of a rose, such as noticeable fragrance, robust color, high petal count, compact growing habit, and disease resistance. It takes time to build up and collect a desired gene pool and to carefully track observation data from generation to generation.
The combination of disease resistance and heat tolerance exhibited by ‘True Passion’ is extremely impressive. This rose has shown itself to be highly resistant to diseases such as black spot and mildews. It has handled the heat in Florida and Southern California and is cold hardy to USDA Zone 4. It roots extraordinarily well, so there is no need for understock. The orange-red fiery flowers are gorgeous and retain their bright color throughout the blooming season. We are also very proud of its prestigious awards from the Biltmore International Rose Trials and the American Rose Trials for Sustainability.
Brent Horvath, Intrinsic Perennial Gardens
Brent Horvath, President and Grower of Intrinsic Perennial Gardens, Inc., is a third-generation gardener, second-generation nurseryman, and first-generation American. He literally grew up in the business, working for his mom and dad at their companies, Intrinsic Landscaping, Intrinsic Perennial Gardens and Flowers by Intrinsic.
Over the years, he was inspired by the work of great plantsmen such as his father Lajos Horvath, George Radtke, Roy Diblik, Roy Klehm, and Alan Bloom. He was encouraged to find plants of his own to introduce, and found his first introduction, Penstemon d. ‘Pink Dawn’ in a field of Penstemon digitalis. This discovery led to continued plant selection and hybridizing work in a wide variety of genera. Brent pursued a BS from Oregon State University, and in 1991, started growing finished perennials for the wholesale trade.
Brent Horvath
Brent has developed more than 100 new perennials, including Andropogon gerardii ‘Blackhawks’, Pennisetum ‘Red Head’, Rudbeckia x ‘American Gold Rush’, more than 10 Geum varieties such as ‘Mai Tai, and 20 sedums including ‘Thundercloud’ and ‘Pure Joy.’ He holds more than 50 plant patents.
Intrinsic Perennial Gardens, Inc. lists more than 500 varieties and sells many more. Main crops include ornamental grasses, sedums, geums, natives, and plants for the greenroof trade.
Brent’s book, “The Plant Lovers Guide to Sedums” from Timber Press, was released in April 2014 which received a Gold award from GWA in 2015. In 2016 he was awarded the PPA Grower of the Year award. He also contributes plant articles to select magazines like Fine Gardening on select subjects.
When Brent is not working, he can be found gardening and traveling.
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