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SUMMER/FALL 2003
Research Blooms in the Garden
by Jamie Palmer & Nicholas Porter

The moment Allan Armitage spotted the delicate, white, plume-like flowers and cut-leaf foliage he knew it could be a winner for American gardens.

What the University of Georgia horticulture professor didn’t know was how much trouble this first cousin of the rose would cause on its journey to commercial production.

For starters, he had only three live specimens. Worse, they were hybrids of two wild plants, one native to the colder Midwest and the other to Korea.

He transplanted the perennials from their home in a Maryland garden to the UGA Trial Gardens’ loamy soil and watched to see what happened.

Two died. But one thrived.

“This darn thing was flowering in Athens, Georgia. It’s supposed to die,” Armitage said.

A couple years later, the plant — which looks nothing like a rose — was still thriving. But it hadn’t produced a single seedling. And it didn’t lend itself to propagation from cuttings.

“I’m saying to myself, ‘Good grief, this is a good plant. But I’ve only got one plant. One plant in the whole world. And what am I going to do with this?’” he said.

Through his research at the UGA Trial Gardens, Armitage has introduced gardeners to dozens of popular landscape ornamentals: ‘Homestead Purple’ verbena, the chartreuse sweet potato vine ‘Margarita’ and a series of coleus that thrive in the sun, to name a few.

To propagate this stubborn hybrid perennial, he enlisted help from Hazel Wetzstein, a fellow UGA horticulture professor, whose office is just down the hall. Wetzstein specializes in biotechnology and is familiar with the use of tissue culture to propagate plants.

Deciding his only option was to divide the plant in two, he gave Wetzstein one part and planted the other back in the trial gardens.

His half died.

All his hopes now rested on Wetzstein’s ability to nudge her sample to produce viable plants through tissue culture.

“She went through all kinds of conniptions and she finally got these things growing in test tubes,” he said. “She was a savior.”

From the test tubes they were transplanted to small containers and then eventually made their way into the trial gardens — this time as an official entry in Armitage’s plant trials — and were subjected to the rigorous evaluation of all plants that bear his stamp of approval. During the next few years, the feisty perennial aced all the tests, first in Georgia and then in Minnesota, Maine, Illinois and North Carolina.

“You are going to start seeing this plant everywhere by 2004, I hope, and it’s going to be called Aruncus ‘Misty Lace,’” said Armitage, who has submitted a patent on the new perennial.

“Why this garden continues to be successful is that we try to stay ahead of the curve. In ornamental horticulture — particularly the material I work with, perennials and annuals — the need, the desire for something new, is infinite. The industry doesn’t want to wait 10 years for it,” said Armitage, an All-America Selections Trial Gardens judge.

Armitage never knows where he’ll discover the next hot garden trendsetter.

For instance, he and Michael Dirr, also a UGA horticulture professor, spotted what later became ‘Homestead Purple’ verbena — and a national top-seller — on a routine drive to Atlanta. At 60 miles per hour, it was just a flash of color, but enough to trigger an instant reflex in serious scientists. They wheeled the car around and turned into the driveway of a modest rural home.

“This lady came to the door in her housecoat,” Armitage recalled, “and we asked if we could look at her flowers. She looked at us like we were two numbskulls.”

Once over the initial shock, she led them to a patch of verbena, a hearty, all-but-forgotten plant with vibrant, stirring flowers.

“She was just in her glory. I think it was the first time anybody had ever noticed her flowers,” he said.

It certainly wasn’t the last. Armitage and Dirr returned to the university that day with seven verbena cuttings for the trial gardens.

Their impromptu visit resulted in the first plant ever introduced by the UGA Trial Gardens, which Armitage founded in 1983. ‘Homestead Purple’ became the No. 1 selling verbena in America and helped launch Armitage on a quest for new varieties of ornamental plants with the potential for success in the floriculture industry.

It also focused widespread attention on the trial gardens and the university’s New Crop Program, a related endeavor in which Armitage seeks out colorful ornamental plants that withstand heat and humidity and resist disease.

“I’m not a plant breeder. I’m a plant selector,” he said. “Most of these plants are ones that I just happened to notice, then did a little selection to make them better plants for this area.”

Another gem came from a private gardener in Raleigh, N.C., who heard Armitage talk about the little-known virtues of a dark-leaved sweet potato already on the market.

“Most people thought I was rather addled to actually be talking about an ornamental sweet potato,” Armitage said. “However, the young man asked me if I would like to try a chartreuse-leaf form.”

Armitage put it through his rigorous trial program, eventually introducing it to the industry as ‘Margarita.’

“We’ve had a lot of successes, but that sweet potato may be the most unusual. I can’t go anywhere that I don’t see that thing — and it all resulted from a story about a crazy vegetable,” he said.

In his quest to brighten the Southern landscape, Armitage has ranged the globe with recent forays in Australian and European landscapes and gardens. From Australia he introduced a Lantana ‘Athens Rose’ named for the rose-colored flowers; from Ireland the bleeding heart ‘Athens Yellow.’

He’s also begun to do more hybridization and breeding through the university’s New Crop Program. Each plant introduced through the New Crop Program is first researched and rated at the UGA Trial Gardens. Outstanding successes include the ‘Sunlover’ series of coleus, the forerunner of the dozens of “sun coleus” seen in landscapes and retail stores today, and the cleome ‘Linde Armstrong,’ named for two North Carolina gardeners who brought the original plant to his attention. Plants like tibouchina ‘Athens Blue’ and rosemary ‘Athens Blue Spires’ are also among those that have made their mark in the ornamental market.

The trial gardens, located near UGA’s College of Pharmacy, serves as both a research plot and a hands-on teaching facility. Students play a vital role in its success. While faculty and staff conduct the research, Armitage employs horticulture students — “Armi’s Army” to those in the know — to keep the plants healthy and the gardens enticing to visitors.

The gardens saturate the senses with floral sights and smells. Said student worker Laura Thompson, “I even saw someone propose in the gardens.”

But it’s also a serious teaching laboratory, a place where Armitage imparts the art and science of horticulture to his charges.

“I like to think that my contribution is in getting people, especially my students, excited about the wonders of plants,” Armitage said.

“I guess I’m passing on the passion,” he said. “‘Homestead Purple’ is going to disappear one day and all the ‘Margaritas’ will also be replaced by something else, but the passion that we have instilled in students — I think that will be around for a while.”

Such an attitude has earned Armitage honors for his teaching skill as well as his research. He was recognized as one of the best teachers in the country when he received the National Educator Award from the American Horticultural Society and has been named Educator of the Year by the Georgia Green Industry Association. He also received the Medal of Honor, the highest award granted by the Garden Club of America, and the Gold Medal of Achievement from the Massachusetts Horticultural Society.

Among his more than 250 articles and nine books on horticultural subjects, his text Herbaceous Garden Perennials — a standard reference on the subject — was designated by the American Horticultural Society as one of the 75 most important horticultural books written in the past 75 years.

For all his personal passion, preparing a new plant variety for the public is rewarding, but it’s also plain, hard work.

The garden exists to provide a place where cultivars can be planted, studied, evaluated and rated. Each cultivar — shorthand for cultivated variety — undergoes a performance rating based on qualities such as flowering, height, uniformity, and drought and disease resistance. Those that receive the highest rating are colorful, withstand Georgia’s heat and humidity, and resist disease. Only then are they recommended for commercial sales.

Armitage is quick to credit Meg Green, supervisor of the trial gardens, as the person most responsible for its success. “Meg does everything; she is the greatest,” said Armitage. Green tracks the growth of each plant from the time the seed is planted in a small container, through its transplantation into the ground as a young plant, to its evaluation and finally — if it passes muster — its introduction to the market.

Her job is never-ending. “Every two weeks I go through and evaluate every single cultivar,” said Green. “And this past year we had more than a thousand different cultivars.”

“When I’m taking the data, I am looking to see among other qualities if the plants are basically the same height and in the same states of flowering,”she said. “People want everything to bloom at the same time.”

Apart from the new material Armitage introduces from his travels, most of the seeds the gardens receives come from companies — many of them international — that want the university to test a plant’s potential for sales in the Southeast. Income received from these companies pays the gardens’ student workers; No university money is used to fund the gardens’ day-to-day expenses.

“Every year we get more plant submissions so we have to be more creative in using gardening space,” Green said. “We keep adding containers, which are one of the ways that just about anybody can grow plants. You can put a container on the porch or an apartment balcony to brighten up the place.”

In spring 2000, the trial gardens implemented the Athens Select™ program through UGA’s research foundation, which administers the sale of cuttings by selected commercial growers to retailers across the country. The program has expanded to Japan and is being evaluated in Europe and Canada. Armitage chooses only the toughest plants for Athens Select — ones that show superior performance in extreme heat and humidity. Each bears the Athens Select trademark — UGA’s seal of approval — and yields a three-cent royalty: a penny for marketing and two cents for the trial gardens.

“We have such a terrific partnership with the industry,” Armitage said. “Essentially they make this program work. They’re putting all the money into the promotion and the production and propagation.”

Ultimately, the trials and the tribulations pay off for all parties: researchers, growers, retailers and consumers alike. But to truly appreciate the work — and to get a peek at ornamentals being evaluated — “a visit is a must,” Armitage said. “The garden is open all day every day and all visitors are welcome.”

For more information, access Allan Armitage at armitage@uga.edu or access www.uga.edu/ugatrial or www.athensselect.com.

Jamie Palmer received her bachelor’s degree in Agricultural Communications from UGA this past May and is currently pursuing a master’s degree in Agricultural Leadership.

Nicholas Porter is a free-lance editor and writing coach in Atlanta.