1/29/2016
Behind the Variety: A Blooming Tribute
Katie Elzer-Peters
“Personally, I think he sprouted from a camellia seed.”
That’s how Debra Green answered the question, “How did he get interested in camellias?” about her husband, Bobby Green, Jr., the breeder behind the beautiful new Susy Dirr Camellia. In actuality, he probably inherited a love of plants from his father, Bobby Green, Sr., who, in 1932, founded Green Nursery, where Susy Dirr and other new introductions have originated.
Bobby Sr. carried around a coin case with “pennies we exchanged for baseball cards at a rate of one penny for card,” and “always a seed or two taken from an unlikely, but promising source,” says Bobby Jr. They still grow some of the original camellias his father hybridized and are continuing his legacy by breeding new ones.
Susy Dirr, a vigorous sasanqua camellia with loads of peony-like bright pink flowers, is their latest introduction, launched in partnership with Plants Nouveau, a new plant introduction and marketing company.
“We are basically plant agents,” says Plants Nouveau co-owner Angela Treadwell-Palmer. “People come to us with plants and we try to find the best fit for the plant, where it will do best in the market.” They work with breeders to help select potential new plants right from the seedling stage. They facilitate first quantities of trial plants to the growers, botanical gardens, gardeners and industry influencers to evaluate the plants.
Bobby says the partnership works well for them. “We’re a very small nursery. Working with a company like Plants Nouveau is a way for a small wholesale nursery to have a larger impact in the market, which I don’t think that type of place can do on their own anymore.”
He continues, “It used to be that you’d find a new plant, call your friends over, ooh and aww over it, and have a couple of drinks. Now the first call you make when you see a new plant is to a patent attorney. We joke about it, but it’s like ‘hide that plant.’”
He credits new propagation methods with allowing larger companies with access to technology to scale up quickly. “We could sell 10 plants and in five years we’ll have 1,000 ready to ship and a conglomerate will have 500,000,” he notes. “We have to protect the development, otherwise we won’t have our next plant.”
It’s a different story with Susy Dirr, the big camellia that could. The Greens are donating the entirety of their royalties from the plant to the Sweet Melissa fund, which provides financial assistance to lung transplant recipients (as a result of cystic fibrosis) and their families.
Sometimes breeders will set out to develop a specific type of plant and that will affect the name. In this case, it was the other way around. The Greens got the idea when they saw the plant, not the other way around. “Susy Dirr was, throughout her entire life, an incredible overachiever. She did not get let cystic fibrosis get the best of her. It was tragic how her parents Mike and Bonnie lost her.”
When Bobby saw the plant, he knew what its name should be. “So here we saw this camellia with the same spirit as Susy. It’s not a diminutive plant. It’s not constrained in its habit like so many of the small landscape plants hitting the market these days. You put it somewhere and let it grow. Like she did.”
GP
Katie Elzer-Peters is a garden writer and owner of The Garden of Words, LLC, a marketing and PR firm handing mostly green-industry clients. Contact her at Katie@thegardenofwords.com or at www.thegardenofwords.com.
Green Nurseries produces the liners for Susy Dirr Camellias. To grow this plant, contact Bobby Green Jr. at Bobby.Green@GreenNurseries.com or visit www.greennurseries.com.