"September 28th can’t come soon enough"

Robert E. Bowden
Director
Harry P. Leu Gardens
www.LeuGardens.org

One of the great things about living in Florida is the astonishing diversity of plants that we as plant enthusiasts have to work with. From the rolling hills of the Florida Panhandle to the sugar sand beaches of the Florida Keys, the assortment of plants for use in residential gardens and commercial landscapes is virtually limitless. Incredible leaf and stem textures, forms that boggle the imagination and flowers in every shade of the rainbow make for a wonderful plant palette with which to create outdoor living spaces.

Gardening, whether it’s in a small residential back yard or in a large corporate campus, should be enjoyable work. For those of us living in Florida, however, we know that it can also be very difficult and demanding even in the best of locales. And behind all of the mysterious textures and exotic colors are the thousands of people that produce the plants that we work with. For that reason, I guess that’s why I enjoy FNATS every September.

We work with plants everyday and I can share my experiences with a person in a FNATS booth and they know what I am talking about. Forget the hearsay and the rumors about the qualities of a particular selection -- the person in the booth has the hands-on, no-nonsense experience that we need out in the field. Often ten minutes with a grower can give you all information you need and might have taken several hours of research on the internet.

As a manager of a public garden, I know our guests expect to see the best plants for Florida when they visit. They want to see them growing in combinations that can be re-created in their gardens at home and they want to see the latest and the greatest plant introductions. They want to see environmentally sensitive plants too– plants that don’t require pesticides and/or lots of water. Perhaps because we have so many we sometimes don’t think about it much, but Florida really is the storehouse for some of the finest growers of plants in the world. Without my traveling around the world looking for new plants, growers throughout Florida bring them to our doorstep to see. That’s where FNATS really shines.

September 28th can’t come soon enough.