TX gardening expert Neil Sperry reflects on changes that have given us new plants & products
I’ve known all my life what I wanted to do when I grew up. That was clear back in the 1950s, and my path hasn’t changed. For many, gardening is a great hobby. Some of us have made a living from it. It’s exciting. It’s changing rapidly with new plants and new products. Indulge me for just a moment and let me share the things that have come along just in my lifetime.
I grew up when College Station was a small town (6,000 residents). Since then, as hard as it is to imagine, we’ve seen retail nurseries develop where you can drive up to the door and pick up your plants any month of the year.
The late Sterling Cornelius of Houston was one of the most respected nursery leaders in Texas. My mom and dad took me to both his wholesale and retail nurseries when I was 15. Years later I was talking to him, and Sterling told me that initially their family had “digging yards.” They would tag plants for customers during the fall so they could be dug and brought to landscaping jobs in the winter and spring. (When Sterling Cornelius retired, the leaders of Calloways in DFW bought and merged the nurseries. In recognition of the great respect everyone had for Mr. Cornelius, they left the name as “Cornelius/Calloways” in Houston.)
Most of the retail nurseries I visited as a kid had large “heeling beds” where those balled-and-burlapped shrubs and trees were held well into the spring and even the summer until sold. That was still common practice through the 1970s and into the ‘80s.
It wasn’t until the late 1950s and into the ‘60s that container-grown nursery stock began to hit its full stride and replace much of the balled-and-burlapped stock. Plants were grown in metal cans that were cut with long-handled snips called “Red-Headed can shears.” I had a nursery while I was in high school, and I still have the can cutters I used as I planted landscapes in College Station. The advent of plastic nursery containers lit a fire under that phase of the industry. I still remember my first shipment of plastic pots from Leominster, Mass. It was an exciting day for a wannabe teenaged nurseryman.
Sod didn’t become a big item until the 1960s. Most new lawns were either seeded from bermuda or planted from plugs shared from one St. Augustine lawn to the next. With the development of large-scale sod farms in South Texas and elsewhere and the equipment necessary to dig and transport the sod, it became much easier to have “instant lawns.”
Annual color took huge leaps in the ‘70s and ‘80s as growers mechanized their production. Plants that had been grown in wispy wooden “plant bands” were changed over to “cell packs” and then ultimately to where we are currently: 4-inch and quart pots. Where we used to have to wait a month or two for the color plants to establish and look great, we now have overnight color in our gardens.
Add to that the incredible work done by the world’s plant breeders, not only in the United States, but also in Europe, Japan, Central America and elsewhere. We have almost unlimited choices in types, sizes, and colors of annuals and perennials now that didn’t exist 20 or 30 years ago. The options change as fast as fashion styles.
During the past 25 years there has been a rush toward patented brands of all types of plants. Roses came early, but now you’ll see many proprietary groups of woody plants, also perennials in the marketplace. All receive study, propagation, promotion, and distribution from the nation’s biggest growers. We’d like to think that they’re all superior selections, and in most cases they are. However, you’re still wise to ask questions of your local nursery expert. They’ll share their experiences with old favorites compared with new introductions.
Speaking of that, early in my career, Texas A&M worked alongside what was then known as the Texas Association of Nurserymen to develop a program for educating and certifying nursery employees so that the general public would be able to know that their advice was timely and reliable. Again, Sterling Cornelius, yes, the hero of the Texas nursery industry, led the way in getting this program going. In the process he was given Texas Certified Nurseryman (old name) Certificate Number 1. Today there are many hundreds of these men and women known as Texas Certified and Texas Master Certified Nursery Professionals. You’ll find them mostly in independent retail nurseries that are members of the Texas Nursery and Landscape Association. Look for their name badges and emblems. They’re the real pros in this industry.
Texas A&M has addressed the need for horticultural education of urbanites through the Texas AgriLife Extension Service. There are upwards of 30 County Extension horticulturists working alongside area and state level specialists. I had the good fortune of being one of the earliest, serving as Dallas County horticulturist 50 years ago as the program was just getting started.
It’s been exciting to watch my industry grow for those 50-plus years. I’ve had the blessing of getting to talk and write about my favorite hobby and to make a living doing so in the process. A close friend who just retired as a greenhouse grower was recently given a tour at Texas A&M, and during that tour he was told that enrollment in horticulture at Texas A&M has grown considerably in recent years. National reports show dramatic increases as well. That’s exciting news about my industry.
If you have a child, grandchild, or friend who is in high school and who is interested in horticulture, encourage that love. Nurture it, because great things are happening. Perhaps there might be more money to be made in writing video games or dealing in Bitcoin, but there’s so much to love about helping make the world a more beautiful and fruitful place. Money isn’t the only thing. For many of us, it’s not even a close race.